By Sarah A. Spitz
Westwood Village, CA (The Hollywood Times) 2/13/26
A world premiere play whose premise really pays off, Beth Hyland’s Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia, onstage at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, offers a multitude of pleasures. The acting, the staging, the lighting, the plot — it’s got everything you could want in a theatre production. It’s intelligently written, both emotional and believable, and flies by in an hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission to stop its momentum.
The story revolves around two couples, in which each partner is a writer at a different stage of success. It’s set in a Boston apartment on Beacon Hill, where American poet/novelist Sylvia Plath (perfectly cast Marianna Gailus) and her husband, English poet Ted Hughes (convincingly portrayed by Cillian O’Sullivan) lived in 1958. Sylvia’s good news, having a poem accepted and paid for by The Boston Herald, makes Ted resentful. Ted’s a domineering character and Sylvia tries accommodate his ego as the traditional wife, while striving for her own identity. They have a strong sexual connection.
It opens with Ted and Sylvia using a ouija board to predict their future, and when the question of whether they’ll have children arises, the answer hangs in the air. Sylvia wants children, Ted doesn’t seem to.
The second couple, Sally (played with frenetic energy by Midori Francis) and Theo (the ultimate mensch, Noah Keyishian) parallel Sylvia and Ted but in reverse.
They’re living in the same apartment in contemporary times, but it’s an updated AirBnB, where they retreat to focus on their writing. Sally had an early career success but she’s overdue on submitting pages for her book about Sylvia Plath, while Theo has just been told he’s won an award for his first novel and will be featured in The New York Times. She tries to be happy for him, but she is clearly distraught by the news.
I think of this play as an equality of non-equivalencies: Ted’s a macho man who uses sex as a tool of control, Sylvia wants children but Ted wants to know if she’ll love him or their child more. She wants to be a literary character and also a housewife and mother.
Theo’s a feminist husband who’s overly accommodating of Sally’s mental state and overprotective of her because of her prior history. Both Sylvia and Sally are contending with mental illness and miscarriages. Theo wants kids, Sally doesn’t want to have sex anymore.
The dynamic plays out in cross-cutting scenes that come together in Sally’s head, where she meets Sylvia as an apparition. Sally looks to Sylvia for for inspiration but Sylvia tells her to get to work on her own. Later Ted will also appear, and he is intimidating to Sally, which is strangely and disturbingly attractive to her.
Ultimately Sally discovers Theo has written about her miscarriage and she’s furious because she thinks it’s her story to tell. While fuming and trying to process this betrayal, both Ted and Sylvia appear just before she breaks down completely.
The play culminates in an unexpected plot twist, after Sally attempts suicide, but be grateful it doesn’t end there. Dialogue throughout is rapid paced and smart, the barbs back and forth sting and reveal.
Jo Bonney’s direction is assured and spot on. The scenic design by Studio Bent is as much a character as the actors, with furniture reflecting styles of the different eras, and sliding walls cleverly used to update the apartment’s appearance, adding or removing rooms as needed for the action.
The music design by Lindsay Jones evokes the emotional state of the characters, and use and variations on the theme from the opera Carmen emphasize both passion and tragic jealousy. Lighting design by Lap Chi Chu is an essential element, with Sally’s face lit from her computer screen and ghostly scenes bathed in red lighting as she breaks down. Blood runs down the wall and wordlessly propels the action to its next phase.
I highly recommend Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia and I predict it will have a long life in productions on other stages.
The Geffen Playhouse is located at 10886 Le Conte Avenue · Los Angeles, California 90024. Get tickets here: https://secure.geffenplayhouse.org/overview/sylvia-sylvia-sylvia
