Sylvia NYC Reviews and Tickets

"It's a play that needs only straightforward sets, an open heart, and four actors who are capable of rendering the central love triangle with the unsullied innocence and raw emotion the work requires. Such qualities are largely absent from the new revival of the play that just opened at the Cort... What you get instead are three acclaimed stars struggling visibly hard to come out on top of it, but not ultimately succeeding."
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"A wonderful revival... Hardly a ménage-a-trois in the conventional sense, Gurney invests this unconventional love story with plenty of humorous dog-eared incidents and dialogue. Necessarily intrusive, but laugh-getting and certainly scene-stealing is the triple role-playing by Robert Sella. All four actors have been put through their paws and paces with a controlling leash by director Daniel Sullivan."
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"What an enjoyable evening. I generally prefer a dark and difficult drama, but what a breath of fresh air my time at 'Sylvia' was. The cast and team manage to utilize serious ideas in a charming way. I left feeling warmed at their jovial portrayal of Greg's mid-life crisis. There is some profanity, and some symbolic analogies about problems in relationships; with this superb cast it gives the show a bit of depth."
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"AnnaLeigh Ashford’s Sylvia is a scampering, simpering dervish of a dog. If you have ever lived with a dog, played with a dog, even walked a dog you see Ashford’s got every note right…There are rafts of wonderful moments in her performance as she trades back and forth across the species divide…Much of the play is fun but the march to the end falls rather flat."
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"Is there any comic performer on Broadway as gifted as Ashford? As she has proven time and again, she possesses rare gifts, all of which helps Daniel Sullivan’s revival rise to heights of true pleasure...Despite the play’s serious undertone, which is undercut by Broderick’s appealing if superficial performance, 'Sylvia' is a comedy, one with a great deal of laughs thanks to Gurney’s sharp dialogue, smart characterization, and the antics of the priceless Ashford as the sassy Sylvia."
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"Amiable as much of 'Sylvia' is, it never goes much beyond its one-joke conceit...Ashford’s lovable, mischievous bitch (in both senses of the word) is the chief reason to see 'Sylvia,' although White is wonderfully honest and comic. Broderick, however, floats along on a single, rather monotonous note of colorless abstraction."
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"A measure of how terrific 'Sylvia' is at its best in the scene where Kate, jealous over Greg’s obsession with his pet, can’t help sharing her frustrations with a friend... What’s remarkable is how clear and rigorous the distinction between Julie White’s imitation of Sylvia and Annaleigh Ashford’s impersonation of Sylvia – a testament to the artistry of the director and to these great actresses."
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"Ashford plays the title character in 'Sylvia,' a comedy as predictable as it is indestructible... Shouldn’t we be done with plays like 'Sylvia?' It is antiquated, it is self-congratulatory, it is conservative in both form and content with its focus on the non-problems of upper-middle-class white New Yorkers...Director Daniel Sullivan can’t teach it many new tricks, but he can give it a typically adroit and able production."
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