Sierra Madre Playhouse provided the opening night audience with some big fun in A.R. Gurney’s dog meets man (and wife) comedy Sylvia on Friday, January 14, 2011. Directed by Gita Donovan the show features a talented cast…

… It doesn’t take a dog-lover to appreciate the way Frederick threw herself into the role of energetic and wildly affectionate Sylvia. Even more impressive is the fact that she took over the part just a couple of weeks before opening….

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You’ll howl with laughter as you fall in love with Sylvia. You’ll fall in love with “Sylvia,” the emotional and heart-felt comedy at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, and you’ll fall in love with Sylvia, the female lead in the play. This love story is the ultimate depiction of the philosophy that it doesn’t matter who you love or even what you love, only that you love.

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For those who want the New Year to “enter laughing” have we got a play for you! More fun than a barrel full of puppies, the Sierra Madre Playhouse is presenting Sylvia, the story of a man and his dog. Usually there is not much that is funny about a man and a dog, but A. R. Gurney’s story looks at the little details in a canine/human relationship and expands them to the highest level of absurdity, resulting in a scandalous comic tumble sure to tickle everybody’s tummy.

Sylvia is a stray dog brought home by Greg (Stephen Howard) who is beginning a downward slide in his job taking him squarely into the tunnel of midlife crisis. His wife Kate, (Cathy Arden) on the other hand is just entering a new career phase teaching Shakespeare to inner city youths. Clearly each one is traveling in a path opposite the other and bringing Sylvia into the apartment is a lot like bringing another woman into the house.

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… I totally understood and appreciated the phenomenal role that was played by Tanna Frederick of Sylvia the dog. Played by a real life human woman but done so as to ensure that the audience understands the emotions, thoughts, antics, and actions of a real dog (at least from a human understanding)…

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Tanna Frederick is an avid surfer, actress, writer, producer and environmentalist who founded Project Save Our Surf and the Iowa Film Festival. She works tirelessly to bring the entertainment and surfing industries together in support of clean oceans.

Greg and Kate have moved to Manhattan after sending their last child off to college. During a walk in the park Greg finds Sylvia, a bouncy lab poodle mix, who appears to understand his frustration with work and middle age. Kate, whose new job is full of opportunity and satisfaction, comes to feel that she is losing Greg to his adoring new best friend. This imaginative twist on Greg’s midlife crisis leads to laughter and some thoughtful insights into the nature of love, marriage, jealousy, and dogs.

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Red-tressed “Queen of the Lot” star Tanna Frederick made a New Year’s wish to get back on stage, she tells us – and, lo and behold, a last-minute opportunity presented itself to take on the lead role of the title dog in A.R. Gurney’s “Sylvia,” opening tonight (1/14) at the Sierra Madre playhouse outside L.A..

“It’s a role I’ve been wanting to play for a long time. This play was originally written for Sarah Jessica Parker, who did it in New York. It’s the most charming story about a dog’s relationship to its owner. This husband brings a dog home, the wife doesn’t want the dog. and it really becomes this love triangle,” reports Tanna.

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Written by A.R. Gurney, the comedy debuted to great success at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1995 with Sarah Jessica Parker in the title role. It follows a middle-aged couple after a recent move from the suburbs to the city. The wife finds new success, the husband is left in what director Gita Donovan calls, “A place of middle age where everything is thrown up for questions.” The couple’s life together is disrupted by a dog named Sylvia who finds her way into their home.

Henry Jaglom’s Queen of the Lot is an arty, eccentric, smart, eclectic, quirky, joyful, honest, parodic, sincere and beautiful look at some Hollywood folks who are, too. It walks a very interesting line between realistic drama and over-the-top comedy to produce a compelling and eminently watchable love story/fame story.

The great Tanna Frederick plays Maggie Chase, a newly minted Hollywood star with her action films, the “Red Wrecker” series, of which the latest, and most complimented was Red Wrecker III, which features, in clips shown in the film, Frederick kung fu fighting with people dressed as seventies street hoods in the stunning location of a storefront martial arts studio. It’s wonderful. Miss Chase is obviously also now the target of frenzied papparazzi attention, and has been required by the court to wear an ankle bracelet monitor after a drunken driving incident.

If you don’t love this film already, I can’t help you.

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