Adherents of ”Sylvia`s Real Good Advice,” available on the comic pages of some 50 newspapers, and soon in a musical show, admire her acerbic turn of phrase and her up-to-the-minute satire.
But what they love is her unshakable gumption to just let go-to soak in a tub all day, putz around in a bathrobe, surrender to the calls of junk food and nicotine and turn housefrau slouch into the royal bearing of armchair diva.
”The truth is, we all want to be like her,” one politically correct feminist fan admits, ”walk around with our hair tousled, eat things that are bad for us, and talk back to our television sets.”
It is through the television that Sylvia`s peaceful den is disturbed-shaken by a world of corrupt politics, phony ideals and phony sales pitches, not to mention more arcane invaders like aliens from Venus, superheroes and a well-meaning daughter whose urgent pleas-such as ”Mother, no tattoos or green earrings!”-are only met with such classic Sylvia credos as ”Don`t be so uptight.”
That`s a sample of Sylvia`s ”real good” advice, which she dispenses gratis to those around her, and sells to the world at large as a way to make a living. (Even her creator, cartoonist Nicole Hollander, admits she`s not sure who buys Sylvia`s advice.)
In any event, here`s a Sylvia sampler:
– ”In 1991, on Aug. 11, at 2 o`clock, men all over America will suddenly start talking about their emotions, expressing all their feelings. At 2:05, women all over America will be sorry.”
– On her answering machine: ”Hi, this is Sylvia. I can`t come to the phone right now, so when you hear the beep, hang up.”
– ”Today the surgeon general announced that the new warnings on cigarette packs would read, `Smoke this and die, fool.` ”
– ”How to know a `real` lady: You almost never see one popping out of a cake. When informed her check has bounced, a real lady will ask to have a loaded pistol brought to her so she can do the honorable thing.”
– ”How to tell if your neighborhood is all yuppie-ed up: You`ll feel safe walking down the street, but you no longer have the desire to live.”
”Chaotic” is the word cartoonist Nicole Hollander uses to describe the world of her brainchild, the blowsy, frowsy, garish, wisecracking heroine of a comic strip now seen daily by millions. How do you turn chaos into a musical? Better yet, how do you take Sylvia`s flat, one-dimensional and slightly surreal world and put it on the stage? Even Hollander is the first to admit that Sylvia is a sedentary feminist:
”She`s not one to take to a protest march,” Hollander says. ”Her world is the bathtub, the kitchen and Harry`s bar.” And yet from that world she somehow makes contact with readers eager for her sage advice, along with the likes of the devil, aliens from other planets and her own somewhat strait-laced and super-serious daughter, Rita.
How all of these characters will fit onto a theatrical stage will be unveiled in ”Sylvia`s Real Good Advice,” a world premiere musical opening March 27 from Pegasus Players. The musical is the product of several years of work and a handful of enterprising, enthusiastic Sylvia fans who happen to be in the theater. (The production will be performed in the O`Rourke Center for the Performing Arts on the Truman College campus, 1145 W. Wilson Ave.)
Sylvia the Musical has an unusual history for a show based on a cartoon. Typically, theater artists or producers seek out the reticent cartoonist; this time around, Hollander came to them.
”From time to time, over the years, I`d get calls from people, usually from New York, interested in turning Sylvia into a cabaret act or something like that,” says Hollander, who created the character in the `70s. ”I always said no.”
Then an odd thing happened: Hollander was bitten by the theater bug.
”I`d always liked movies better,” she confesses, but then a friend on the city`s Joseph Jefferson Committee, which hands out awards for theatrical excellence, started taking her to plays. Soon after, she met Arnold Aprill, artistic director of the City Lit Theatre Company, a small troupe devoted to staging literary works.
”Maybe it was that I work all day by myself, writing and drawing, that the urge to collaborate happened. In any event, I went to him.”
Besides being a fan (”I courted her and courted her on this, if you want to know the truth,” he said), Aprill has long experience at City Lit adapting printed matter to the stage. He`s even worked with another cartoonist, Lynda Barry, on ”The Good Times Are Killing Me.”
Aprill knew, however, that he needed help translating this cartoon into a musical and he found it in the person of actor/director Tom Mula. The next step involved wading through years of Hollander`s books and strips to come up with a 90-minute show. Some cherished material didn`t make it, failing to work on the stage or just not in keeping with the spirit of the revue. A squabbling couple, for instance, was ditched fairly late. Adam and Eve aren`t part of the package either.
Hollander had her own veto: ”I`d seen a stage adaptation of
`Doonesbury,` and one thing I realized is that political humor goes out of date in a week. I have that problem with newspapers, which have a three-week advance. But in the theater, you`re fixed, and if it`s at all topical, it can get old very quickly. We stayed away from it.”
Favorite Sylvia features that will be on view include a trio of nasty pet cats (played by actors Susan T. Hummon Stevens, Matthew Greenberg and Allan Louis); Harry the Bartender (Skip Griparis); Beth Anne (Carolynne Warren), Sylvia`s hyper-straight friend who, when most kids were eating crayons, was politely cutting hers into bite-size bits first; Rita, her daughter (Denise La Grassa); and the Devil and Gernif the alien from Venus (both played by John Bonny).
Sylvia will be portrayed by Carole Gutierrez, a rising comic performer who recently scored raves in Pegasus` ”Broadway Bound.” She`ll be armed with a lot of Sylvia artifacts: the bathtub, the television set, the junk shop attire (a liberal source for costumes in the show) and that inimitable attitude.
For music, Hollander, Aprill and Mula, who share credit as book writers, auditioned a number of composers and finally picked Chicagoan Steve Rashid, who worked extensively with the Practical Theatre Company. (All four, plus Cheri Coons, contributed to the lyrics.)
”It`s hard to describe it, but the three of us came to share a sense of exactly what Sylvia`s world is and what it isn`t,” says Aprill. ”The other composers turned in fine work, but Steve came with the same wacky sense of humor in his music that you find in the comic strip.”
Alluding to Hollander`s flair for ”junk ecology,” defined as taking the culture`s junk and recyling it as humor, Aprill and Mula describe the 10 numbers in Rashid`s score as pastiches and song satires of such targets as
`40s boogie woogie, beebop, rock `n` roll and barber shop harmony.
Their only rule: no ballads. ”One thing we didn`t want was a conventional musical comedy,” says Mula.
In 1988, when the work was already in its second year of development, the University of Wisconsin in Madison offered to mount the production over the summer, rehearsing anew every week so the creators could churn out revisions almost by the hour. That gave the show an almost unprecedented workshop outing.
”It also gave us something we didn`t have before and needed,” says Mula, ”a deadline.”
Pegasus thereafter agreed to include the show in its season (the rewrites by now are too numerous to count) and David H. Bell, whose credits include a string of hits at Marriott`s Lincolnshire Theatre, including the lavish world premiere ”Matador,” signed on as director-choreographer (yes, fans, Sylvia not only sings, she dances).
What remains to be seen is if Sylvia`s sardonic, one-of-a-kind humor and world view can make it from the page to the stage. Clearly, she`s had the advantages of a long haul and a parcel of talented supporters.
Says Mula: ”We sat down at one point and boiled down the message of the strip, and one thing we came up with is the importance of friends. She has friends, but she doesn`t have a romantic relationship, and yet she`s happy.” ”It`s also nice to see a middle-aged woman at the center of a story,”
adds Aprill. ”She`s indulgent, like most of us wish we could be. She`s self- involved but not mean. And she`s not at all good at doing things that people tell you are good for you.
”She`s not about being good or right, but about being real. Sylvia`s all about just being who you are.”
