The decision to bring a dog into an existing family should never be made unilaterally. Manoa Valley Theatre’s season-opening production of playwright A.R. Gurney’s 1995-vintage fantasy/love story “Sylvia” proves the point.
Greg, middle-age and drifting, unhappy with his upper-middle-class white- collar job, finds a stray dog in a New York City park and instantly bonds with her. The dog — her name is Sylvia — understands him in ways that no one else does — certainly not his wife, Kate, whose career teaching Shakespeare is on the upswing while his job stagnates. Greg takes Sylvia home and has her installed in the apartment when Kate arrives. Kate hates Sylvia at first sight. Sylvia feels the same way about Kate.
Greg avoids his job and his marriage by taking Sylvia on long walks. Greg and Sylvia talk about everything. Kate, who can also talk with Sylvia, sees the dog as a threat to the marriage. If Greg won’t get rid of Sylvia, the marriage is over.
Hawaii first saw “Sylvia” in 1998, also at MVT; Kristine Altwies was so adorable in the title role that the wife was never much more than an obstacle. Becky Maltby was a harsher and more street-nasty mutt at The Actors’ Group in 2006; Maltby’s take on the role made the wife’s concerns about the man-dog relationship seem much more reasonable without losing our natural American sympathy for a dog.
This time Christine Lamborn (Sylvia) and MVT guest director Stephanie Conching go right down the middle. Lamborn is as adorable in the early scenes as Altwies was in 1998, but Lamborn’s Sylvia is more calculating and blatantly manipulative. Making Sylvia a little less likable a little sooner in the story lightens the load on Cindy Shea (Kate) in winning the audience over to the wife’s objections to having a stray dog intruding in her living space.
The most dramatic change in the current production is where Conching and Peter Togawa (Greg) place the emphasis on the relationship between Greg and Sylvia. Togawa gives us a Greg who uses his newfound relationship with his beloved dog to avoid dealing with his problems at work and the problems with his marriage. Rather than confront the unsatisfactory situation at the office, Greg jeopardizes his job by leaving early and walking the city streets with Sylvia.
And what kind of a marriage is it when one of the partners prefers walking a dog to spending time with their spouse?
Togawa’s nuanced performance ensures that Greg’s likability and love for his dog don’t obscure the fact that the man is also being dangerously irresponsible.
Veteran Honolulu stage actor Stu Hirayama gives a career-best comic performance as the three secondary characters. Hirayama is seen first as Tom, the owner of an un-neutered dog named Bowser. Tom meets Greg at a dog park and warns him of the danger of giving dogs human names rather than traditional dog names like Rover, Fido and Spot — especially when the dog is female.
When Hirayama came out as the second character on opening night Thursday, he almost stopped the show. He brought down the house a second time in the scene where Kate and Greg see a therapist. To say more would spoil the surprises that are part of Manoa Valley Theatre’s engaging and thought-provoking production of “Sylvia.”
‘SYLVIA’
>>Where: Manoa Valley Theatre, 2833 E. Manoa Road
>>When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 6
>>Cost: $40 general admission, $35 seniors and military with ID, $22 age 25 and younger)
>>Info: manoavalleytheatre.com or 988-6131
>>Note: Minimum age 13. Contains “four-letter word” vocabulary and a “color commentary” description of dogs having sex offstage.
