Los Angeles Times
- Not Recommended
"...World premieres are risky, and the writing for this one hasn't yet settled. The play's split focus, moving between 1958 and the present, is a sign of conceptual ambition. But Hyland struggles to find the pacing and rhythm of her complicated vision."
Stage Scene LA
- Not Recommended
"...Haunted house stories can be both thrilling and entertaining. There is, unfortunately, little fun to be had inside the Beacon Hill apartment occupied by blocked, depressed writer Sally in the present day and in the 1950s by her more celebrated (albeit equally depressed) 20th-century counterpart in Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia, Beth Hyland's downer of a World Premiere at Westwood's Geffen Playhouse."
LA Theatrix
- Highly Recommended
"...Rising playwright Beth Hyland's "Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia," having its world premiere at Geffen Playhouse, is just what you'd want in a new play - ambitious and compelling in a well staged and performed production. Bringing to life poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes as they affect a current writer and her husband, the play challenges expectations in a rollercoaster ride of ghostly interactions."
ArtsBeatLA
- Highly Recommended
"...Jo Bonney expertly directs the play with confident style and gets superb work from her actors. She does an impressive job of seamlessly transitioning from one time period to another, ably abetted by Lap Chi Chu’s expressive lighting design and Studio Bent’s cleverly adaptable set. Hyland’s script is a marvel of deep character work and thematic concerns combining to make something fresh, with abundant humor and raw emotion giving it life."
TheaterMania
- Recommended
"...Writing a narrative with parallel stories is tricky because both sides need to be equally compelling. In Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia, having its world premiere at Geffen Playhouse, author Beth Hyland juxtaposes Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’s turbulent relationship with a modern couple also struggling when both are novelists with imbalanced successes. The play’s issue is that despite the toxicity between them, Plath and Hughes are more compellingly written than the 21st century Theo and Sally."
Stage Raw
- Recommended
"...While the lore of Sylvia may draw you to this show, Sally is what makes you stay. Plath is intriguing on multiple levels— a brilliant writer, a mother, a tragic literary figure whose life ended in suicide — but it’s through Sally that the audience can witness an artistic woman’s mind at work. It’s also intriguing to see how the minds of both Hyland and director Jo Bonney have worked to shape a story about poetry, tragedy, ambition, and the uncanniness of a writer’s life. They do not disappoint."
Indulge Magazine
- Highly Recommended
"...The ensemble is uniformly superb, navigating tonal whiplash with astonishing fluency. Humor gives way to dread, intimacy curdles into accusation, and then, just when the atmosphere threatens to collapse under its own emotional density, the writing pivots again. There is no slack in the structure. At one hour and forty minutes, Beth Hyland's play unfolds without a single inert beat."
Larchmont Buzz
- Highly Recommended
"...Certain dead literary heroes inspire fans and acolytes, impersonators and aspirants to seek a deeper connection with their idol. When that idol is Sylvia Plath, be careful what you wish for- as Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia, now playing at the Geffen Playhouse, makes chillingly clear."
The Hollywood Times
- Highly Recommended
"...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."
Broadway World
- Not Recommended
"...Do famous dead poets experience pressure? Performance anxiety beyond any obvious pressure of, you know, being deceased? If there were indeed circumstances that caused people to – as the well-trod saying goes – turn over in their grave, you’d think Sylvia Path wouldn’t get a lot of rest. All those tortured souls looking to her oeuvre of poems (to say nothing of THE BELL JAR) and wanting to write like Sylvia Plath, heck to be Sylvia Plath. Emily Dickenson, too, but since our subject is the world premiere of Beth Hyland’s SYLVIA SYLVIA SYLVIA at The Geffen Playhouse, we’ll save any concern about Miss Dickenson and her peaceful afterlife for another occasion."
