Drama Review: Plath's Tortured Legacy and Tragic Downfall Still Resonates

“Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia,” Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, Feb. 4 – Mar. 8, 2026

 

Feb. 15, 2026 | By Bruce R. Feldman

In Brief: This complex, endlessly fascinating, and superbly staged new drama interleaves the mercurial careers and strained marriages of two female authors. One is a young present-day novelist struggling after early success; the other just happens to be the poet Sylvia Plath, whose short, patchy career, personal demons, and notorious suicide at age 32 catalyzed several generations of women writers.

Marianna Gailus, Midori Francis and Cillian O'Sullivan in Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia at Geffen Playhouse. (Photo: Jeff Lorch)

What toll does achieving, or even seeking, success extract on an author’s marriage and sanity? That is one of several thorny questions dramatist Beth Hyland poses in Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia, now receiving an impressive world premiere production at the Geffen Playhouse.

As the story opens, it’s 1958 and newlyweds Sylvia Plath (Marianna Gailus) and Ted Hughes (Cillian O’Sullivan), both poets, have just moved into a tidy Boston apartment where they plan to spend a year writing. Plath finds herself juggling the difficulties of writing and getting published with her (unquestioned for the times) wish to be a good wife to the more successful, priggish Ted.

In the next scene, it’s some 60 years later and Sally (Midori Francis), a once-celebrated novelist grappling with writer's block and overshadowed by her husband Theo’s (Noah Keyishian) rising literary fame, seeks refuge and inspiration in the same apartment that Plath and Hughes once inhabited.

As Sally settles into the flat (an elegantly simple design from Studio Bent) her insecurities begin to fester, the boundaries between reality and imagination begin to blur, and her marriage with Theo starts to unravel. She experiences haunting encounters with Plath’s ghost that force her to confront the thin line between creative inspiration and madness.

Marianna Gailus and Cillian O'Sullivan as Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (Photo: Jeff Lorch)

Theo is facing his own inflection point. While he wants to be an enlightened, supportive, modern husband, his frustrations and conflicting priorities bubble to the surface. As Sally’s emotional decline deepens, he’s faced with a choice between helping her or devoting himself to his writing. He can’t do both.

Theo’s choice may disappoint but not surprise you. Sylvia has a similar choice to make. Ted already has made his. Again, no surprise here.

As the narrative moves between the past and present, Hyland finds more similarities than differences between two. When it comes to male chauvinism, not much has changed fundamentally, she argues. Feminism and women’s liberation notwithstanding, creative expression is always going to trump relationships. Women authors will always take a backseat to men.

Marianna Gailus as Sylvia and Midori Franics as Sally both bring their characters to life with precision, compassion, and an emotional intensity that lingers after the curtain comes down. Theirs is a seamless, natural transition from outward normality to crippling psychosis. Cillian O’Sullivan and Noah Keyishian also make a strong impression.

Noah Keyishian and Midori Francis as Sylvia and Ted's modern-day counterparts (Photo: Jeff Lorch)

Technical and design credits are first rate, as with all Geffen productions. Lap Chi Chu’s atmospheric lighting perfectly defines and contrasts the 1958 scenes from the present-day ones. Unnerving music by Lindsay Jones is a kind of Gothic riff on the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen. Unusual, but effective.

Of course, none of this would have succeeded so superbly without Jo Bonney’s sure handed, unhurried, insightful direction of Hyland’s demanding text.

Writing is hard and women still can’t have it all, the playwright tells us. Sixty years of feminism and enlightenment have barely made a dent. The more things change… well, you get the idea.

It’s a cheerless message – a renewed wake up call to do better – and one that is beautifully rendered on the Geffen stage.

“Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia” Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024, geffenplayhouse.org, (310)-208-2028