A comely canine provides interspecies spice in the doggone funny sex comedy Sylvia

Not Another Theater Company’s still-new dinner-theater operation at the Locker Room Sports Bar, 528 E. Hiawatha Blvd., currently offers Sylvia, A.R. Gurney’s chic comedy about midlife obsession. Sylvia may have been inspired by a famous New Yorker magazine cartoon of two decades ago. Two middle-age men are sitting by a coffee table, with one fondling the head of a large dog, who appears to have a kind of understated Mona Lisa smile. He says, “Queenie’s such good company I sometimes think she’s almost human.” Then our eye travels to the lower right corner of the frame where we see that under the fur the cartoonist has drawn in a well-pedicured female foot.

In Gurney’s Sylvia we begin with a middle-age couple, Greg (J. Brazill) and Kate (Binaifer Dabu), self-described empty-nesters who have moved to Manhattan after 22 years of marriage. Both are restless, but Kate, a high school English teacher, wants to recharge her career and has applied for fellowships to study abroad. Greg also has a job but is casting about for new directions. 

Navroz Dabu’s stylish set reminds us of prominent city landmarks, including that art deco treasure, the Chrysler Building, with room for exploration at stage left, like the greenery of Central Park. It is there that Greg finds a mixed-breed dog, part Labrador and part poodle, who follows him home. The tag on the dog’s neck reads “Sylvia,” and she’s played by an attractive young woman, Heather J. Roach, whose blonde hair is tied in puppy dog tails.

Grateful to be taken in, Sylvia overflows with exuberant affection, and reacts with ecstatic barks and tongue wags to the smallest favors. Not quite housebroken to live indoors, Sylvia bounds across the room and romps on the couch, much to Kate’s scowling displeasure. In playing Sylvia, Roach has some protection on her knees as well as what looks like fur on her cuffs, as well as a tag around her neck. All of this puts off Kate, who would like to kick the dog out.

But Greg has already bonded with Sylvia, spending more time with her than with his job. Going on long walks, they appear to discuss life and astronomy, subjects Greg cannot sustain with Kate. Not surprisingly, Kate fears that Greg’s growing obsession with Sylvia is a threat to their marriage. It’s as if Sylvia were, um, another woman.

Adultery has been a big theme in successful Gurney plays, such as The Dining Room. His most-often performed work, the two-hander Love Letters, chronicles an adulterous affair between people of equal status that runs several decades. More reckless middle-age men have craved the smiling adoration of younger women of far lower status, for which the pre-discovery Bill and Monica are the most recent paradigm. There is scarcely a reader who does not already know this, which is why the audience always knows that Sylvia both is and is not a beautiful woman. Just as a man with a loving dog is much like having a mistress, and having a devoted mistress is also like having a cocker spaniel, minus some important services.

Strange to say, this simple device—is it a girl or a pooch?—continues to deliver laughs, or at least smirks, for more than two hours and doesn’t wear thin. When Sylvia goes into heat and shouts street expletives about her craving for hookups, we can’t forget that the comely Ms. Roach is delivering them. Similarly, querulous Kate’s complaints that Sylvia is coming between her and her husband become bitterly comic because we know that, well, she’s right, but she can’t do much about it. 

Three minor characters comment on Greg’s relationship with Sylvia. Tom, a baseball-capped blue collar regular guy with his own dog supports Greg, but recommends surgery to prevent unwanted pups. Phyllis, Kate’s prissy friend, is repulsed by what she sees. But highly androgynous Leslie, a marriage counselor, flies into a rage, telling Kate to get a gun and plug Sylvia between the eyes. All three are created by the same performer, Gerrit Vander Werff Jr., Gurney’s pointed reminder that our sexual preferences determine how we see the world.

In his program notes, director Dustin Czarny explains that he founded Not Another Theater Company because he wanted to produce plays like Sylvia and, indeed, especially Sylvia. One reason he gives is that he is a dog-lover. And while Sylvia has not exactly been neglected on local boards, it allows several players to show their stuff. Gurney has been one of America’s more popular playwrights, but his works never migrate to the screen because of what he demands from live performers. In this case they are all Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) nominees and winners.

The title role is a feast for Heather J. Roach, who maximizes some of her best opportunities, such as the exhaustion from pleasure after mating with Bowser in the park. More affecting, though ironic, is her wincing, bowl-legged gait after the spaying. Also showy are Vander Werff’s three contrasting characters. Who knew that his legs, when shaved, would come out so shapely?

As the married couple, both Binaifer Dabu and J. Brazill are cast against type. One of the most inventive local players, Dabu can usually plumb the Hedda Gabler lying beneath the slightest characters, but here she’s mostly a comic foil. Her best scenes are the snappish dialogues with Greg. Brazill, whose deserved SALT nomination arose from his McMurphy in Appleseed Productions’ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, usually brings coiled energy to his performances. This makes his disaffected bourgeois Greg less plausible (“Farmers do not exist. Read The New Republic!”), but injects heat into his devotion to Sylvia.

Sylvia has been marketed as a farce, as was Not Another Theater Company’s first production, Run for Your Wife. This is misleading, even if Dramatist Publisher, the rights holder, encourages it. There’s no slapstick and there are no slamming doors. Laughter is plentiful, but mostly for what we pretend we do not see.

This production runs through Saturday, May 1. See Times Table for information.