“The Little Dog Laughed” opened last night at the Performance Network in Ann Arbor. It earns six stars: four pitch-perfect performances by Barton Bund, Jacob Hodgson, Roxanne Wellington and Chelsea Sadler, the crisp and loving direction of Ray Schultz, and the evocative and perfectly suited set design by Monika Essen. It’s a sparkling entertainment, in depth somewhere between Hamlet and “Sex and the City.” The sophisticated, literate script and hair-trigger delivery provide a constant stream of clever laugh lines and a charming love story with a disarmingly realistic ending. All this comes wrapped in a puff pastry of happy cynicism.
The actors talk and move fast which challenges the lazy listener, but to brilliant effect. No one begs for a laugh but they come anyhow, because the comic timing of the actors and their utter ignorance that what they’re saying is funny hones the humor to a fine edge.
When the satirist Stan Freberg opened an advertising agency in 1957 he adapted the hypocritical MGM motto, “ars gratia artis” (“art for art’s sake”) to the more realistic “Ars gratia pecuniae” (art for money’s sake). This might well be the motto of “Little Dog Laughed,” yet only the hardest heart could fail to sympathize with these characters groping for land in a sea of selfishness
The nudity and the very limited boy-boy sex action will disappoint the raincoat crowd and should offend only those who come to be offended. Without them, the show would be childishly coy, unsuited to the stark hyper-realism of the script.
The show is mostly set in a movie star’s
Black and white costumes of the protagonist add to the metaphor for starkly competing values. Other scenes take place, pointedly, on brightly colored pieces brought on stage ad hoc, presumably to represent life outside show business. The lighting enhanced this effect.
I don’t believe in “must see” shows, but this one comes damn close.
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