Sylvia (play)

Sylvia
Broadway Playbill 2015

Sylvia is a play by A. R. Gurney. It premiered in 1995 Off-Broadway. The subject is "Sylvia", a dog, the couple who adopts her, and the comedy that results.

Gurney said that the play had been rejected by many producers before the Manhattan Theatre Club produced it, because "it equated a dog with a woman, and to ask a woman to play a dog was not just misogynist, but blatantly sexist." Gurney added that he did not think that way. He noted that the play has a "timely message of the need to connect in an increasingly alien and impersonal world. 'There is a need to connect, not only to a dog, but to other people through the dog.'"

In an article for the 2nd Story Theatre in Warren, Rhode Island, Eileen Warburton wrote that "'Sylvia' is a love story, of course, or at least a story about a man’s relationship with one of those magical animals people in stories so often meet just when they’re at a troubling crossroads in life, an animal that is a guide to finding the best in ourselves.... our propensity to project human characteristics and motives onto our non-human companions is dramatized by having the adopted dog played by a sexy, adoring young woman."

Sylvia opened Off-Broadway at Stage I of the Manhattan Theatre Club on May 2, 1995, where it ran for 167 performances. Directed by John Tillinger, the cast included Sarah Jessica Parker as "Sylvia", Blythe Danner, and Charles Kimbrough. The production received Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Play, Outstanding Actress in a Play (Parker), and Outstanding Costume Design (Jane Greenwood).

The play ran at the Coronet Theatre, Los Angeles, in February 1997, starring Stephanie Zimbalist as "Sylvia", Mary Beth Piel, Derek Smith and Charles Kimbrough.

The play was produced by the La Mirada Theatre, Los Angeles, California, in 2007 starring Cathy Rigby as "Sylvia".

The play was produced by the Berkshire Theatre Group, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in July 2011. The reviewer called it a "comic masterpiece".