Critique Essay

Critique of Sylvia
The play Sylvia, written by A. R. Gurney, is a story about a female dog that brings trouble to a married couple that barely moved into the city of New York. Lewis University’s production of Sylvia at the Philip Lynch theatre on October 4th, 2008 was humorous and entertaining. It showed real life situations that couples go through during their middle age, and the strong relationship between man and dog.
Sylvia is about a female dog that gets found at a park by Greg, a financial trader whose career is not going well. Greg decides to keep Sylvia and takes her to his apartment. Trouble begins when Kate, Greg’s wife, who in the other hand is doing well in her career as an English teacher does not agree in keeping Sylvia. Kate and Sylvia do not get along and become rivals through out the play. Their rivalry gets to the point where Greg has to decide between his dog, Sylvia, or his wife, Kate. At the end, Kate understands how important the man and dog relationship is and agrees to keep Sylvia.
This play is mostly about how pets, in this case a female dog, have a huge impact in human life. Greg finds an escape from his stressful life through Sylvia. The audience is able to see how Greg feels by the way he acts. It is clear to see how his mood goes from being stressed out to being calm after finding Sylvia. The Audience can also relate to the play because some of the scenes demonstrate events that people have gone through. For example, the scene where Greg showed Sylvia how to do tricks. This show was definitely theatricalism because of different factors. We learned about the characters by their behavior displayed during the play. Also, the language was fairly simple during their conversations and the whole play was based on events moving from incident to incident by cause and effect. The major factor that determines the style of this play is that there was not a fourth wall. The actors talked directly to the audience at certain points of the show...