‘Sylvia’ opens at Clackamas
STORY AND PHOTOS BY MATT ROWNING
A dog humps, shits, eats trash, licks
where you don’t want it to and bites.
Despite the lack of prefrontal cortex
in these four legged hairballs, we
hum ans can ’t seem to get enough
o f them . Perhaps we keep them
because dogs love so unequivocally
and ungrudgingly.
In Clackamas Community College’ s
production of Sylvia, Sam Levi’ s
character Greg, a middle aged stock
trader, finds this dog brand of love
to be more fulfilling than his wife’s.
The play explores the relationships
between man and dog, man and wife
and man and world by making great
use of an anthropomorphic, English
speaking dog, Sylvia.
Sylvia the dog was played by Molly
Bowman, who took loving care to her
8 Clackamas Print N OVEM BER 18,2015 theclackamasprint.com
role. Reminiscent of FXX’ s W ilfred,
Bowman carries on conversation
w ith both Greg and his wife Katie
throughout the play. As Greg’s dog,
her stupidity incites of all the play’s
man vs. wife tension.
Later on , Sylvia becom es an
imparter of wisdom to Greg and Katie,
offering sagely advice to both. Having
opposing personality traits written
into a character is a difficult challenge
for an actor or actress, but Bowman
did it well.
C o u p le d w ith th e p h y sic a l
ch allen ges o f the role (craw ling,
ju m p in g , ru n n in g and hu m p in g
houseguests vigorously), Sylvia was
perfectly played by Bowman. The
entire gim m ick o f the play is this
speaking dog, and if not for a sturdy
actress cast in this role, the work flip. Gurney doesn’t shy away from
would fall apart.
the gross out jokes. Sylvia jokes about
The roles of Tim, Phyllis and Leslie her anal gland being squeezed and
were all played by one actor, Colin “ fucking the shit out o f” Tim ’s dog
Stewart. Tim is a stoner biker of sorts: Bowser, just to name two out of a vast
a macho dog owner in the park. Phyllis pool of on-the-edge humor. I always
is an uptight middle aged alcoholic enjoy a few toilet jokes, but be aware
and Katie’ s best friend. Leslie is Greg that this play may not be for your six-
and Katie’ s androgynous therapist year-old daughter.
with an anger issue. He did a good job
The four actors and their director Jim
switching between the three distinct Eikrem did a great job staging Sylvia.
roles. Though each of the characters The technical aspects o f the play
he played were rather one dimensional, were also well run, so kudos to Chris
Stewart played to his own strengths: Whitten and the technical crew. As I
enjoying and reveling in his characters’ said in my review of Ain’t Misbehavin’ ,
own shallow mindedness.
if I don’t think about the technical
If Sylvia had issues, they m ostly aspects of a show, I believe they were
fell to A .R Gurney’ s script. I’ m not done well.
squeamish, however, some parts of
Sylvia runs in Niem eyer Center
the show might make one’s stomach Theater through Nov. 22.