'Slyvia' warms the heart at Brown County Playhouse

While the Brown County Playhouse season is usually made up of plays and musicals that are little more than diversions, last year's season ended with a comedy with substance in "Lost in Yonkers." The 2000 season is no exception with the final production of the summer A.R. Gurney's "Sylvia."\nWith a cast including Equity actors and former IU master of fine arts in acting graduates Sarah Louise Turner and Rob Johansen, Brown County Playhouse regular Diane Kondrat and associate professor of acting and directing at IU Bruce Burgun, the show is a poignant comedy about life, love, gender issues and pet owners.\nThe play is about Greg (Johansen), who finds a dog named Sylvia (Turner) in the park in New York and brings her back to his apartment to be his pet. Sylvia, who talks and is understood by the characters in the play, is a threat to Greg\'s wife Kate (Kondrat), her relationship with Greg and her plans for their future. Throughout, Greg and Kate get advice and help (perhaps misguided) from Tom, Leslie and Phyllis (all played by Burgun).\nTurner's performance as Sylvia was impressive. She moved and carried herself as a person playing a dog, and her facial expressions and emotions were as simplistic and sincere as a dog's. Her performance was dead-on and moving.\nJohansen and Kondrat had wonderful chemistry that allowed for each of them to be three-dimensional characters instead of falling into the trap of one being the protagonist and the other the antagonist. \nIndividually, Kondrat created a wall around herself with Kate. It was this wall that allowed for the sympathy with Johansen's affection toward Sylvia when, in all reality, he was ignoring and disregarding his wife.\nJohansen tapped into an emotion that many feel: the need to feel alive rather than just blandly exist. His heartfelt need for that richness was what made his love for Sylvia understandable and condoned.\nAdding comical moments to the play was Burgun with his three characters. Each character added to the underlying gender theme. His first character was a chauvinistic male dog owner, his second, a characature of a New York upper middle-class woman and his third a character of such eccentricity that it must be the audiences' decision to decide gender. Burgun brought out each character's comedic aspects with impeccable timing.\nThe show's design worked extremely well. The set, designed by Christopher Berg, reflected the big-city atmosphere with images associated with dogs juxtaposed with Greg and Kate's posh apartment. Marie Shakespeare's lighting enhanced the depth of the play by creating intimate moods even in an outdoor park atmosphere. Alumnus Ansley Valentine's costumes perfectly reflected the character's personas. Kate's wardrobe screamed school teacher while Sylvia's costumes helped the audience to identify with her emotional states proving the old saying that clothes do make the man, or dog.\nThe play is more than a modern comedy, and director Bill Kincaid was able to bring out the underlying issues such as gender asymmetry, a person's need to feel alive rather than just exist and the love that owners can feel for their pets in a way that was subtle with substance.\nThe production epitomized what is possible from a show at the Brown County Playhouse, great theater in an intimate, unorthodox setting.