Forget Lassie--’Sylvia’ Is Man’s Best Friend

In “Sylvia,” A.R. Gurney invents a delightfully simple idea for a screwball comedy and then sustains its one note all the way through to the play’s unexpectedly touching end. In “Sylvia,” the Old Globe Theatre delivers a sparkling production that will charm you and keep you laughing for the duration. Of course, it helps if you’re an animal lover.

Forget Lassie, forget Benji, forget Duke. Sylvia is the dog of the moment, as played by the utterly irresistible Kellie Waymire. When Waymire sits at attention, every muscle in her body tensed in excitement as she awaits her master’s word, you will want to adopt her and never let her go.

That’s what happens to Greg (William Anton), a Manhattan everyman going through a midlife crisis. The children have all left for college and his job as an investment trader is “too abstract” and unfulfilling. He finds Sylvia in Central Park. Instantly smitten, he takes her home to the apartment that he shares with his wife, a teacher named Kate (Jane Carr). Kate is not smitten.

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It’s easy to understand why too. Sylvia is so incredibly adorable, her emotions so vivid, her affection so unconditional. What wife could compete? And Greg becomes unhinged by his new love. With Sylvia, he believes he has reconnected to primal emotions. He spends so much time walking in the park with her that he ends up getting suspended from work; everyone he knows tells him to get therapy.

Gurney has written a play-stealing role for an actress (Sarah Jessica Parker got petted by critics in the 1995 off-Broadway production, and Zoe Wanamaker currently owns it in London). With a natural ebullience (and wearing kneepads), Waymire indeed steals every scene. She evokes a dog in all its doggy aspects, not literally, by walking on all fours, but figuratively. She quivers with the desire to be loved. She sniffs compulsively, jumps up to nuzzle a face, or, less adorably, to hump the leg of a contemptuous guest. She gets to talk to her owners and is answered back by them, and she sometimes knows as much as a dog would and at others is endowed with uniquely human wisdom. Her way of barking is to shout “Hey! Hey! HeyHeyHey!” in a Brooklyn accent.

Gurney manages both to address the uncomfortable human metaphors involved in this love affair and dismiss them. It’s clear that Greg could have chosen a compliant young woman to aid him in his midlife crisis. But he didn’t; he chose Sylvia, so most of the audience will be more understanding than Greg’s wife. Director John Rando gets the tone exactly right, keeping cuteness at bay and making this commonplace struggle really matter to all of the players.

Anton is a blandly likable lump of clay as Greg, which provides a nice foil for Waymire. As Kate, Carr grows more lovable the more unnerved and disheveled she gets. In three different roles, Don Sparks has a field day. As Phyllis, Kate’s droll Upper East Side friend, the one Sylvia humps, Sparks in drag is hysterical. But his most riotous turn is as Leslie, a smug marriage counselor of indefinite sex. “I let my patients select my gender,” he says, in an intolerably pretentious therapeutic voice. When Leslie suggests to Greg that he has adopted Sylvia to replace his once worshipful wife and now-at-college daughter, Greg admits, “You might be right, Leslie.” Replies Leslie in soothing tones, “I think I am right, Greg.”

Without Leslie’s help, and with Sylvia’s, the couple learns lessons about sharing, about the unforeseen give-and-take in situations that once felt as malleable as cement.

Robin Sanford Roberts’ loopy set shows the couple’s apartment to have bland modern furniture and a carpet of grass that extends over to the park outside. Perhaps because that’s how Sylvia would see it. Christina Haatainen’s costumes for the groomed and ungroomed Sylvia are very funny. For her part, Waymire steals the show and just about everyone’s heart. She shows why actors should never appear with animals.

* “Sylvia,” Old Globe Theatre, Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, San Diego, Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 12. $22-$39. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

William Anton: Greg

Jane Carr: Kate

Don Sparks: Tom, Phyllis, Leslie

Kellie Waymire: Sylvia

An Old Globe Theatre production. By A.R. Gurney. Directed by John Rando. Sets Robin Sanford Roberts. Costumes Christina Haatainen. Lights Ashley York Kennedy. Sound Jeff Ladman. Stage manager Raul Moncada.