LIVE: “Sylvia” @ Berkshire Theatre Festival, Pittsfield [GailSez]

In A.R. Gurney’s 1995 light comedy, Sylvia, she is part poodle and all woman. Succinctly put, Sylvia is a dog*. Not the play, the character. The play is the fluffiest and sweetest of merengues, perfectly concocted by director Anders Cato and a splendid cast. If you are now or ever have been a dog-owner, you will just love this open love letter to the miraculous bond that has developed over the millennia between canines and homo sapiens.

There is a plot, but it is negligible and Gurney dispatches it deus ex machina after he has run out of dog jokes, which is fine by me. The fun here is in seeing the relationship between man and dog played out by two humans – in this case the eminently likeable David Adkins as Greg and Rachel Bay Jones as Sylvia. Greg has a wife, Kate, and Cato and actress Jurian Hughes manage to make much more of her than the plot device that she is.

Forty-something and newly minted empty-nesters, Kate and Greg are both pondering the gap between child-rearing and retirement and both are itching for a change. Kate has earned her Masters’ degree and is passionate about her new career as an English teacher. Greg is fed up with the corporate grind and longs for something more “real.” The open affection, visceral energy, and basic needs of Sylvia, a mutt Greg finds in the park one day (or does she find him?), instantly fills that void, just as she threatens to suck Kate back into the nurturing and subservient role she has finally outgrown. Kate’s inability to embrace Sylvia and her relationship with Greg comprises all the tension in the play. But don’t worry, folks. There’s a happy ending.