Georgina McKee and David Cecsarini in Sylvia. Photo by Next Act Theatre.
The holidays aren’t only about sugarplums and Christmas ghosts. And holiday plays needn’t be only about unfettered smiles and jolly ho-ho-hos. There are no Santas or elves in sight at new shows from Milwaukee Chamber Theatre or Next Act Theatre, but don’t pass them by.
Next Act’s Sylvia is a perennial favorite from the American theatre’s resident chronicler of WASP angst and ennui, A.R. Gurney. While the Next Act ads for the show feature dogs-dogs-dogs, Gurney’s 1995 play is really about the strains and challenges of married life. There’s a dog involved, of course, brought home from the park by a somewhat disaffected New Yorker. Greg’s job is a drag, his wife is deeply involved in her own profession, and a companion is just the object of transference he needs. Sylvia, the dog, is – as she says herself – The Other, an empty vessel into which Greg pours his desires to take control of his life. And since Sylvia is played by an attractive younger woman, the desires become palpably erotic rather than sublimated.
But don’t let the psycho-speak scare you away. Sylvia brims with wit and insight and a fair amount of foolishness, though it’s much more thought-provoking than you’d expect from a play in which one of the actors mimes peeing on the rug. Credit director Mark Ulrich with finding the right balance of humor and psychology. As Sylvia, Georgina McKee is charming, and not too schticky, which helps the ideas of the play land gracefully. David Cecsarini plays Greg with the right touch of mid-life vulnerability. As Kate, Mary MacDonald Kerr is careful to show the long-standing affection for her husband, even as he strikes out in maddeningly adolescent directions. And Ryan Schabach is a hoot playing three supporting roles of varying gender.
There’s a similar blend of humor and wistfulness in Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Heroes, Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Gerald Sibleyras’s Le Vent des Peupliers. Here, three aging veterans from The Great War gather in 1959 on the terrace of the “rest home” they’ve occupied for varying lengths of time. They check in on each others’ various ailments, complain about other residents and their caretakers, and admire the wind-blown poplars that lie on the horizon. But in Stoppard’s and Sibleyras’s hands, a kind of beautiful and comic chamber music unfolds. Gustave (Richard Halverson) is the aristocrat that puts the “cur” in curmudgeon, a deep and sonorous cello that announces its nobility as a cover for the gnawing fear that lies inside the melody. Henri (Robert Spencer) is a spry and sunny violin, looking on the bright side of every situation. And Philippe (Daniel Mooney) is a pungent viola, a narcoleptic worry machine whose face seems to be forever twisted into an anxious grimace.
Stoppard’s trademark wit is softer here, though no less charming. Instead of strings of encyclopedic references, he sets his sights on creating richly layered characters that embody both the joy of camaraderie and the terrors of mortality. Director C. Michael Wright handles the nuances of the script with great delicacy, giving the moments of darkness their due without letting them overwhelm the play, which is, after all, a story of three men going gently into that good night, even as the poplars remain on the distant horizon.
