Annaleigh Ashford is a golden girl. She won a Tony last year for her role as a ditzy ballerina wannabe in You Can’t Take it With You. She’s totally believable as a former hooker cum lesbian lover receptionist on TV’s “Masters of Sex.” So it’s no wonder that believing she’s a rough-around-the-edges but lovable cur isn’t at all difficult. As Sylvia, a mutt who’s found in the park by a man named Greg (Matthew Broderick), who needs something to hold on to, she’s nothing short of adorable. “My goal in life is to please,” she smiles winningly.
But when Greg brings Sylvia home to his Manhattan apartment, his wife is anything but delighted. She’s finally gotten their last child off to college, and Kate is yearning to finally spread her wings. She teaches Shakespeare to Junior High students in the inner city. It’s 1995; Clinton is the President, and there’s money available for her to take a sabbatical leave in England. The last thing she needs is one more deterrent from the life she’s planned; “I want freedom from dogs!” she declares. With a sneer, she calls the dog “Saliva.”
Greg is miserable at work, and he and Kate don’t have much of a connection anymore. He fixates on Sylvia, who’s all too eager to accommodate his obsession. They stroll through Central Park together, on ever longer walks, which sometimes go well into the evening. Along the way, Greg meets Tom (Robert Sella), another over-zealous dog owner, and together they watch with mixed emotions as Tom’s dog mates with Sylvia behind a bush. Oh dear. Greg has a hard time realizing that Sylvia is just a dog in heat after all. Ashford uses her dance experience to great advantage. Her Sylvia is a gymnast, stretching, crouching, leaping onto furniture. “Hey hey hey” is the bark of choice, whenever the doorbell rings, or she gets upset. There are some rather unsavory aspects of having a dog around. Greg cleans up a pool of urine, then crumples the newspaper and stuffs it in the living room trash can. It’s funny the first time Sylvia aggressively sniffs Kate’s friend’s crotch; not so much by the third time. Strangest of all, a great deal of profanity has been added to this avatar of the play. We get the idea when Sylvia can’t control herself straining to attack a cat. There’s nothing added by a string of obscenities, especially when this is a show that should attract a multigenerational audience of dog lovers. We know what Sylvia wants to do when she’s wildly attracted to Bowser, another dog in the park. Ashford’s face is so expressive, there’s no need to repeat a curse word several times to get the message across. By the time Sylvia, Greg, and Kate sing “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” it’s clear that all three beings are feeling a combination of loss and longing. At the end of the day, Greg finally realizes that he needs to connect with living; Kate and Sylvia develop a guarded truce; and the tale of a dog who literally speaks to her owners becomes a mirror into how we fill the gaps in our lives.
