"Sylvia" Review Round Up

Critics and Audiences agree, Sylvia is a hit. Take a look... "

"Hilarious, splendid, and warm...the cast delivers the best-acted comedy that Jersey has seen " - Read the review from The Star Ledger


"a splendidly acted, smartly directed new production," -
The New York Times

"Dratch pulls no punches in her portrayal of man’s best friend. She begs, scratches and sniffs with canine abandon. Her dog-like candidness had the audience howling at the plays opening night"..."Stephen DeRosa...is singularly worth the price of admission" - Recorder Newspapers

"A genius "Sylvia" comes to life at George Street Playhouse" - Home News Tribune

"Dratch delivers a totally winning performance" - Asbury Park Press

Do you agree? write your own review below!

Tails of Canine Devotion: Part II

The honor for most articulate and purple prose regarding the relationship between dog and man would have to go to George Graham Vest. He served as a Confederate Congressman during the Civil War and would go on to serve as a US Senator. Between the fall of the Confederacy and his future political career, Vest returned to his law practice in Missouri. In 1870 he took up a case representing a plaintiff whose hunting dog, a foxhound named Old Drum, was shot and killed by a sheep farmer for trespassing on his property. Vest’s winning closing testimony has been immortalized as the “Eulogy on the Dog”:

Gentlemen of the jury: The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

Gentlemen of the jury: A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death. – Burden v. Hornsby (1870)

Actress Is in the Doghouse in "Sylvia"

reprinted from U.S. 1 News

I’m still wearing my collar. It helps me keep in character as it makes a little jingling sound. And it’s good for scratching and such,” says Rachel Dratch in a phone interview during a rehearsal break for the comedy “Sylvia” by A.R. Gurney, which goes into previews on Tuesday, March 30 and opens Friday, April 2, at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick. Not the usual opening remarks, but then Dratch is playing not-the-usual title character, who just happens to be a dog. In the play, a man brings Sylvia home, much to the dismay of his wife. “I become a bone of contention between them. No pun intended,” says Dratch.

This role can be enriched by what actors call “sense memory.” When Dratch was a little girl a stray dog, a collie-huskie mix, ran up to her in the family’s front yard. Indulgently, her parents let her keep her and she named her Muffin. In “Sylvia” she plays another mixed breed mutt. We’re told it is a labradoodle — a cross between a Labrador and a poodle. Dratch assures me that dog lovers, pure bred or non, will love this play.

Most of us are more familiar with Dratch as other characters she played for seven years on “Saturday Night Live.” Remembering her Debbie Downer expressions, one can certainly imagine that her Sylvia must have a very expressive face. “I’ve never played a dog before except for Snoopy in a high school production of ‘You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.’ But I’ve certainly played a lot of creatures and critters over the years.” And she’s not unfamiliar with characters who relate to pets as we remember her as Phoebe, a woman whose giant pets (a parrot and a cat) ruin her dates.

Some of her other memorable SNL characters include Martha Stewart, a Junior High boy named Sheldon, a space lesbian, Harry Potter, Hillary Clinton, and Elizabeth Taylor. She and Jimmy Fallon played Boston teenagers. And with Will Ferrell, the two of them were professors called “The Luvers” whose most memorable scene had them in a hot tub. “I played lots of dudes [male characters]. It’s bizarre. Although one of them I wrote for myself because I thought it would be funny — this 80-year-old sleazy Hollywood producer Abe Scheinwald.”

She says that SLN cast members usually write much of their own material, and she enjoys writing even though, with the performance deadlines, “It was trial by fire.” She would like to do more writing but misses the pressure she thinks she needs to produce it. Her brother, Daniel, is a writer in Los Angeles who has written for television and received awards for work on “Monk” and “The Chris Rock Show.”

Dratch grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, where her mother (now retired) directed a transportation agency for the state and her dad is a radiologist. She remembers watching SNL when she was only in the third grade. “I was fascinated by SNL but never thought, ‘Oh, I’ll be on that some day.’” She was in school plays every year and went to summer theater camp. “But it was always just something fun, not like pursuing it as a career. After all, the odds of making it are pretty daunting.”

At Dartmouth College, she earned a degree in drama and psychology. “I did think about becoming a therapist and still have on occasion when I’m not getting jobs or am sick of the business. But then I realize I’ve put so much time in as an actor, and it’s so much fun. I think I’m in it for life.”

She was part of an improv group in college who decided to take a trip to “Improv Central,” a.k.a. Chicago, to visit the well-known comedy venue Second City. “I didn’t want to not try just because I was scared of it. So, in Chicago, slowing but surely — certainly not instant success — I got into the Second City Touring Company, which led to moving up to their main stage. Then, you’re really in it.” She wrote sketches and appeared in them for four years. For two of the sketches, she won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Actress in a Revue. At Second City, she and Tina Fey developed and appeared in a two-person show that eventually made it to New York City at the Upright Citizen Brigade Theater. My friend Jeff Knapp (theatre director and sound designer) saw this and remembers it as one of the funniest evenings ever, especially their “Wuthering Heights” spoof.

Dratch joined Saturday Night Live in 1999. In addition to sketch work, she has appeared in other television programs and made film appearances. “A lot of them are on late night cable. Adam Sandler put me in a bunch of his movies. Sometimes I get recognized from those. I haven’t done as many movies as I’d like to.”

Also in New York she has appeared as part of a rotating cast at the Triad Theatre on the upper west side on Monday nights in “Celebrity Autobiography.” “We read from various celebrity autobiographies. The people who wrote them didn’t mean them to be funny, but now — time has passed.” She has “done” Joan Lunden and Vanna White, but says, “My favorite has interchanging bits from autobiographies by Burt Reynolds, Loni Anderson, and Burt Reynolds’ secretary. I read the secretary.”

She has spent quite some time involved with the on-again, off-again new musical “Minsky’s” with music by Charles Strouse (“Bye Bye Birdie,” “Annie”) lyrics by Susan Birkenhead (“Jelly’s Last Jam”), and book by Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”). When it opened in the spring of last year at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles, New York Times theater Critic Charles Isherwood flew to LA and favorably noticed Dratch. He wrote, “Ms. Dratch and Mr. [John] Cariani as the matched misfits almost steal the show with a sour-grapes duet, ‘I Want a Life,’ a plaintive song about the allure of the untheatrical life. ‘I want a life where pies are dessert,’ Mr. Cariani sings in a nasal drone matched by Ms. Dratch’s. ‘Where flowers are flowers and none of them squirt.’”

She says she was thrilled to meet and work with Strouse and told him that “Annie” was the first professional musical that she saw. “I used to dance around the living room to the record from ‘Annie.’” She never dreamed that she’d grow up to be in one of his shows. For now, “Minsky’s” keeps “going into limbo. Just last week I heard there had been another rewrite. I keep waiting by the window — another year — still a possibility.” Let’s hope.

Meanwhile, mark your calendar for Dratch’s special appearance on Saturday Night Live on May 8, when a group of alumnae gather to support Betty White as the evening’s host. But first, there’s “Sylvia.” Woof. Woof.

In Rehearsal with "Sylvia"

posted by Joe Marchese

The sign on the door off the theatre lobby reads “SYLVIA: Rehearsal in Progress – Quiet Please.” But inside, things are anything but quiet. At any given moment, there’s yapping, barking, singing – and much laughter. How could there not be? Veteran comedienne and actress Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live, Minsky’s) leads our stellar cast, channeling her inner canine as Sylvia. She’s joined by multiple Tony Award winner Boyd Gaines (Contact, Gypsy) and his real-life wife, the deliciously dry Kathleen McNenny (George Street’s Human Events, Sight Unseen) as Greg and Kate, the married New York couple “adopted” by Sylvia. Versatile comic pro Stephen DeRosa (Into the Woods, The Man Who Came to Dinner) rounds out the four-person company, playing a variety of roles. With this cast, hilarity is expected. But by the conclusion of Sylvia, audiences won’t only have laughed non-stop, but they might even have learned a little about themselves, too.

In A.R. Gurney’s play, Greg and Kate’s life is changed in ways they never anticipated when Greg finds (or is found by?) the stray dog named Sylvia at a New York City park. Since its 1995 New York debut, theatergoers worldwide have embraced Gurney’s play, identifying with his semi-autobiographical work. But the story of Sylvia also rings true for the dog-friendly ensemble under the direction of Artistic Director, David Saint. Key to any rehearsal process is exploration of a play’s themes and text, and Sylvia’s is no exception. Many discussions of our four-legged friends occur daily, and we even had a guest appearance one afternoon by Boyd and Kathleen’s dog, the adorable Cinders. Perhaps to inspire Sylvia in a pivotal scene, Cinders was generous enough to show off some of her tricks!

Dratch has drawn particular inspiration from her beloved friend Muffin. Rachel told the GSP Blog that she met Muffin at age twelve when the stray dog ran onto her front lawn and approached her, much in the way Greg claims Sylvia found him in Gurney’s play! Rachel immediately connected with Muffin, a collie/husky. For around three days, Muffin followed her around. In those pre-Internet days, the Dratch family put up signs looking for her owner, and when nobody appeared, they subsequently brought her to the pound. Pound policy was that if Muffin’s owners hadn’t emerged within ten days, the Dratches could adopt her. Rachel noted that her father wasn’t a “dog person,” so prospects didn’t look likely. But Rachel visited Muffin over the ten-day period, and at its conclusion, her dad had been convinced. The answer to “Can we keep her?” was a resounding “Yes!” and Muffin became a permanent “member of the family,” loved by all…including her dad.

Rachel’s performance captures the sometimes-frenetic animal physicality of Sylvia whether she is being called upon to roll over, catch, or even get caught in a leash. Rachel is careful to avoid, in her own words, becoming too “person-y” in her portrayal. As a result, she has frequently recalled Muffin’s mannerisms and behaviors in creating Sylvia for George Street audiences. Like Sylvia, described in the play as having a certain “hybrid vigor,” Rachel says that Muffin was a bit more rugged than her name would indicate. But the name stuck anyway! Each rehearsal is definitely a workout for the tireless Ms. Dratch.

Rachel revealed in rehearsal, though, that Sylvia isn’t exactly her first canine role – she once starred as Snoopy in a theatre camp production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown! (Yes, Rachel sings, too, and recently starred at Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre in the Broadway-bound production of Minsky’s!)

Playwright Thornton Wilder is believed to have said, “The best thing about animals is that they don’t talk much.” Well, with all due respect to the late and estimable Mr. Wilder, he was wrong! We hope you come see Sylvia – all-talking, all-dog, all played marvelously by Rachel Dratch, Boyd Gaines, Kathleen McNenny and Stephen DeRosa. We begin previews in less than two weeks, on Tuesday, March 30. See you at the theatre!

JOE MARCHESE is the Assistant Director of Sylvia.

Everything you wanted to Know about David Saint, but were afraid to ask!

Ok, well maybe not EVERYTHING, but here's a great feature appearing in NJ Monthly next month on our Artistic Director, David Saint

The Saint of George Street

George Street Playhouse artistic director David Saint's innovative vision has helped the venue become one of the most popular in the state.

Posted December 14, 2009 by Linda Fowler

David Saint is the artistic director of The George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick.

Photo by Frank Wojciechowski.

When David Saint’s long-ago ancestor, a sea captain from Wales, splintered his ship off the coast of Cape Cod, he must have reckoned it a sign. As the story goes, he built a house to replace the ship—on what eventually became Saint’s Landing Beach in Brewster, Massachusetts, a mill town—and it was in that same house that Saint’s grandfather and father were born.

Generations later, the same wanderlust infected David Saint, who was a journeyman stage director helming productions in 36 states. A dozen years ago, he was poised to direct the TV series Just Shoot Me when the call came from George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick: Would he come aboard as artistic director? He set a course for New Jersey—coincidentally, Milltown—where he’s been ever since.

The theatrical profession is often associated with ragged old steamer trunks, but Saint thinks of his 375-seat space as a designer handbag. Because of its intimacy, proximity to Manhattan, and solid reputation among actors, it has become a draw for top-tier playwrights and directors who often prefer the spotlight on their work rather than the spectacle of Broadway.

Under Saint’s stewardship, the 36-year-old theater has developed a niche for new chamber musicals and provocative plays. In the past decade, the musicals The Toxic Avenger and The Spitfire Grill had their world premieres under Saint’s watch before moving to the off-Broadway stage. David Auburn’s Proof was unveiled at George Street’s 1999 Next Stage Series for fledgling playwrights, then swept up three Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize during its subsequent off-Broadway and Broadway runs; it returned to George Street for a full staging in 2003.

As artistic director, the 46-year-old Saint likens himself to a nutritionist planning a balanced diet each season for his audiences: comedies for appetizers, dramas for the main course, and musicals as frothy desserts.

Next up for George Street is “a light soufflé”: Barry Wyner’s new musical Calvin Berger, a modern take on the classic romance Cyrano de Bergerac, set in a high school. A-lister Kathleen Marshall is signed to choreograph and direct. Over the summer, Saint will turn his attention to rehearsing George Street’s production of Sylvia with Rachel Dratch. He’ll also be auditioning and rehearsing actors as director of the upcoming national tour of Broadway’s West Side Story. Saint is the New York production’s associate director under Arthur Laurents, his longtime mentor.

Saint, a former divinity school student who was attracted by mysticism of the theatrical kind, is amused by theater fans who feel compelled to travel to Manhattan. “It always kills me when people call me: ‘Can you get me a ticket to Toxic Avenger in New York, can you get me a ticket to Proof in New York?’ I say, ‘Yeah, but it’s going to cost you a lot more. Why didn’t you see it here for less?’”