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A female is causing a rift between Greg and Kate, a middle-aged married couple.
One might say the relationship is going to the dogs.
The conceit in A.R. Gurney's "Sylvia," which opened Friday at Trumbull New Theatre, is that the canine that amplifies the problems in Greg's and Kate's marriage is played on stage by an actress.
Several of Gurney's other plays have been staged at TNT and other area theaters, including "The Dining Room," "The Cocktail Hour" and "Love Letters."
"He's always got kind of a different slant on things," director Lisa Bennett said. "With 'Sylvia,' he had trouble getting it staged originally. Some objected to a woman playing a dog. And there are aspects, as a director, where you have to stop and think. You have to play it just the right way."
Gurney has refuted the charges that the play is sexist. In an interview with Playbill, the playwright said, "The hero, Greg, becomes humanized through this dog. It leads him to breaking out of his old conventional ways … relating to people in a new way. It's almost as if we need an inhuman thing in order to make us feel most human."
The original off-Broadway production in 1995 starred Sarah Jessica Parker as Sylvia and Charles Kimbrough (best known for "Murphy Brown") as the dog's owner. When it finally appeared on Broadway 20 years later, Parker's real-life husband, Matthew Broderick, played the dog's owner.
Bennett saw the cast of the Broadway production being interviewed on television, which inspired her to pick up the script.
"Greg is at a crossroads in his life when he finds a dog in the park," Bennett said. "He makes a real connection with the dog, but his wife is not happy. The kids are grown and out of the house, and he's bringing home a dog, which for her means more work. Her career is starting to take off while his is slowing down. They're at cross purposes, and the dog brings everything to a head."
"The dog, in theory, becomes a problem, when it isn't the dog. It's other things going on with them, but the dog gives them something to focus on."
The cast features Herb Everman as Greg, Amy Burd as his wife Kate, Patience Miles as the dog Sylvia and Gary Roddy and Sue Koltak.
Bennett said one of the biggest challenges was finding the right approach with the title character.
"You want her to come across as a dog and have some of the dog's mannerisms, but you want to highlight the human aspects," she said. "The challenge is not to have her be too human but give her those human qualities."
Bennett decided to have Miles play the part primarily upright and not on all four and to convey her animal characteristics with faster movements and an excitability. Miles had to learn how focus her attention away from the other performers on stage -- the way an easily distracted canine would -- and the other actors had to learn to ignore her actions on occasion.
"If there's an animal in the room, you don't always pay attention to them," Bennett said.