Preview: Sylvia by Pachyderm Theatre

How do you choose between the love of your life, and man’s best friend? 

Over the last two years, being at home with our pets has meant more to many of us (and to them) than at any other time in recent memory. That’s something that’s been made clear to Pachyderm Theatre, as they stage feel-good play SYLVIA this May, centering on an unlikely love-triangle that places our our non-human family members at the centre of the action.

Written by two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, A.R. Gurney (The Dining Room & Love Letters), this modern romantic comedy follows middle-aged ‘empty-nesters’ Kate and Greg, as they sell their home in the suburbs and down-size to a fashionable park-view apartment in the city.

Kate is passionate about her new career teaching English literature to junior high school students, and has fallen in love with everything else that the big city has to offer. The museums, the galleries, the music venues, the theatres, finally she and Greg can begin a brand new chapter after a lifetime of parenting. How lucky can you get? All this plus a swanky apartment with spectacular views of the park.

But the park also happens to be where Greg, on the edge of an existential crisis, first meets Sylvia: a cute young female who melts his heart. Bouncing into his lap with fresh vitality and hope, she instinctively seems to understand the world at large and his place in it. And Greg’s in the wrong place. But she has some ideas about how to fix that. 

Directed by Pavan J Singh, and featuring a cast of Alexandra Kong, Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai, Susie Penrice Tyrie and Sean Worrall, watch as this unlikely love-triangle sets the scene for a comic battle of wits as Kate tries to rescue her 25-year marriage from domestic mayhem, and learn what it truly means to be devoted to our partners!

Sylvia plays from 18th to 22nd May 2022 at Goodman Arts Centre Black Box. Tickets available from Peatix