Sylvia ***

Twenty years after its debut at Manhattan Theatre Club, A.R. Gurney’s charming but inconsequential play has finally made it to Broadway. It presents the playwright in a much more favorable light than any of the three Gurney plays that Signature recently mounted. Annaleigh Ashford’s performance as the eponymous canine is sheer delight, reason enough to see the show. As Greg, the man with a midlife crisis who is instantly smitten with Sylvia when she plops into his lap in Central Park, Matthew Broderick is the best he has been since “The Producers.” The ever-watchable Julie White strikes all the right notes as Greg’s wife Kate, who does not want a dog to upset their newly-empty nest or her budding career as a teacher bringing Shakespeare to uptown middle school students. Robert Sella is a triple threat as Tom, another dog owner in Central Park; Phyllis, Kate’s friend from Vassar days whose struggle to stay on the wagon is threatened by Sylvia’s enthusiastic attentiveness; and Leslie, the androgynous couple counselor Kate and Greg visit. As Sylvia becomes more entrenched and gets more attention from Greg than his wife does, a showdown looms. I’m sure you can guess the outcome. The play’s conceit is really too slender for a work that runs over two hours, but director Daniel Sullivan does an excellent job of hiding that. The triple casting of Sella is droll, but seems cut from a different cloth than the rest of the play. David Rockwell’s set offer a lovely scene of Central Park with the essentials of a park-view apartment that materialize when needed. Ann Roth’s costumes are excellent; the ones for Sylvia are truly inspired. You may forget the play five minutes after it ends, but you will likely enjoy it while you're watching it. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including intermission. 

Airline Highway *

Playwright Lisa D’Amour was a Pulitzer nominee for Detroit. Chicago’s Steppenwolf is a multi-award-winning ensemble theater company with an enviable record of successful transfers to Broadway including August: Osage County. Joe Mantello is a two-time Tony Award-winning director. Julie White is an excellent actress. Putting them all together for this Manhattan Theatre Club import must have seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t. Despite the talented cast of 16, the splendid scenic design (by Scott Pask) and the evocative costumes (by David Zinn), the results are curiously flat. The play takes us through one day at the Hummingbird Hotel, a place that has seen better days and that is now frequented mostly by people who live on the margins of society. We meet a pill-addicted hooker (White), a stripper (Caroline Neff), an unhandy handyman (Tim Edward Rhoze), a wise drag queen (K. Todd Freeman), a poet (Ken Marks) and the hotel manager (Scott Jaeck). At the request of Miss Ruby (Judith Roberts), the dying former strip club owner who serves as materfamilias to the residents and who wants to enjoy her own funeral, they are planning a party for her in the hotel parking lot. Bait Boy (Joe Tippett), a former club employee who was swept off by a wealthy older woman from Atlanta three years before, has returned for the party. In the play’s most unlikely device, he has brought along his gal pal’s teenaged daughter (Carolyn Braver) to interview the denizens of the hotel for a high school report on subcultures. The playwright’s point of view is obscure. The play offers not much heat and very little light. In no way does it provide the emotional payoff of Lanford Wilson’s far-better models, Balm in Gilead and Hot l Baltimore. Surprisingly few people near me failed to return after intermission. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.