Mary MacDonald Kerr burst into the Milwaukee theater community in 1995 playing a young Armenian immigrant in the emotionally harrowing "Beast on the Moon." It was an auspicious debut in a local acting career that has become notable for its breadth and depth.
MacDonald Kerr is especially adroit at finely tuned, sensitive roles. But what is the character that has stuck in the memories of Milwaukee theatergoers? It's Sylvia, a frisky and tirelessly ingratiating dog.
In theater lobbies and during post-curtain talkbacks for more than a decade, someone always mentions Sylvia to MacDonald Kerr.
"As it turns out, people like dogs," Mark Ulrich deadpans during a conversation about this little phenomenon.
Sylvia is the title character of an A. R. Gurney comedy about a romantic triangle. A middle-aged and middle-class Manhattan couple becomes empty nesters, and the husband, Greg, slides into a mid-life crisis. He's losing his job and down in the dumps while his wife is preoccupied with her career.
Greg comes upon a fervently friendly dog while walking in Central Park, and he takes the cute canine home. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but dramatist Gurney added a clever twist.
The dog is played by an attractive young woman in ordinary clothes who acts and expresses herself like a human. She doesn't bark. She says "hey" in an insisting, look-at-me way.
Sylvia is the image of the anthropomorphic creature we imagine our dogs to be.
A pre-Carrie Bradshaw Sarah Jessica Parker played the pooch in the New York staging of "Sylvia" in 1995, and MacDonald Kerr portrayed the dog in Next Act Theatre's wildly popular production here a year later. Ulrich was the dispirited husband, Greg.
Next Act is reviving the show this month, and this time around MacDonald Kerr is playing the wife, and Ulrich is directing. When the company's producing artistic director, David Cecsarini, decided to do "Sylvia" again, there was some discussion of MacDonald Kerr reprising the title role.
"But we quickly got over that," she said during a recent chat. "It needs to be a young woman, a threat to the marriage, and I'm not that anymore." Georgina McKee is Sylvia now.
MacDonald Kerr reports she had great fun doing the character. "She is a very physical dog, and the role is very physically demanding," she said. "I had knee pads as part of my costume.
"Sylvia is responsible for a lot of the comedy, and I was terrified in rehearsals. I didn't think I was funny at all."
She learned otherwise at the production's first preview in front of an audience. "People were laughing before I started to talk. People were laughing at the concept," she recalls.
"There is nothing like having a couple hundred people laughing with you. It's like a drug."
MacDonald Kerr's character for the upcoming revival is quite different. "The wife is not very happy through most of the play," she says.
"It is hard work to be unhappy. It will be a different experience, a different task.
"The wife is very necessary for the situation to be funny. She is often the straight man."
MacDonald Kerr was not a dog owner when she played Sylvia, but now she has two. "If I was doing this again," she says, and her voice trails off. "I know so much about dog behavior now."
The actress concedes she feels a twinge of envy for the new Sylvia, McKee. "I am envious in a healthy, happy way. It's a kick to have that much fun."
"Sylvia" runs Nov. 18 to Dec. 18 at Next Act's new theater at 255 S. Water St.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
