Home > Theater Reviews > Archives > 2007 > March > 15 > Entry
‘Go, Dog. Go!’ @ Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B. Through March 25.
Photographer Elliott Erwitt’s doggy portraiture has made him a witty observer of canine culture. Along the same leashes, author P.D. Eastman’s 46-year-old classic of kiddie literature —“Go, Dog. Go!” — imagines that pooch psychology and human behavior bear the same wily paw print.
Adapted for the stage by Allison Gregory and Steven Dietz and now romping out of control on the Alliance Theatre’s mainstage, the playfully palatable family offering runs like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. With its preening pink poodle, happy yellow dog, mop-eared fiddler and buffoonish ringmeister, this highly physical carnival of barkers should appeal to everyone from toddlers in la-la land to aficionados of superb clowning.
Dogs on skates and dogs in cars.
Dogs at work and dogs at play.
Dogs in hats and dogs that dance.
The intermissionless, 55-minute performance operates as a series of sketches announced with dry drollery by a master of ceremonies character called McDog (Chris Ensweiler) — and choreographed down to the last whisker and paw by Hylan Scott. There’s not much of a narrative and plenty of foolishness. Yet there’s also a beguiling sense of painterly order and composition that seems to try to reference Sondheim as much as Seuss. (Music is by Michael Koerner, Clint Thornton and a few vintage composers.)
Part of the success of this sophisticated low comedy lies in Rosemary Newcott’s stylish direction, part of it in Kat Conley’s modular landscape and part of it in Sydney Roberts’ color-saturated costumes, whose body-clinging designs make the actors seem more like humans than stuffed animals.
Along with plucking some of the city’s finest comedians (Courtney Patterson, Tim Stoltenberg and Ensweiler), Newcott also brings in up-and-comers Enoch King (Yellow Dog) and Ayesha Ngaujah (Red Dog) — and wag-of-all-trades Scott E. DePoy, who plays violin and also rattles, bangs and winds up a variety of percussive instruments. (The salt shaker routine, by the way, is terrific.)
A scene in which two canines try to build a doghouse with an architectural drawing and a single board is good yippy slapstick, and the construction-worker sequence is a blast, thanks to Stoltenberg’s runaway jackhammer. Come lunchtime, the hardhat-wearing mutts put out a picnic blanket and a tiny vase of flowers and listen to DePoy’s “La Vie en Rose.” But soon, the civilities break down into a sandwich-slinging fracas and a chain-saw gag. In what seems to have become an Atlanta children’s theater tradition, there’s even an aquatic ballet — only this time, it’s dog paddlers. It’s cute, but the bubblewrap dance finale feels a little lame.
In this hour of shameless dog-foolery, the pièce de résistance is Patterson’s Hattie, who keeps wandering through the play in her pink pompoms and fur-trimmed everything. Each time, there’s a different chapeau and that old Marx Brothers riff: “Do you like my hat?”
McDog almost always turns up his schnoz. But on the morning I saw the show with a bunch of schoolkids, inevitably someone would shout back reassuringly, “I like your hat.” Whether the headdress was an impossibly long nightcap or an assemblage that would do Marie Antoinette proud, we liked it, too. In a world of primary colors, pastel Hattie is as refreshing as strawberry sorbet.
Ruff, ruff. Hooray.
THE VERDICT: Children’s theater goes delightfully to the dogs.
THE 411: 1 and 3 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through March 25. $15-$20. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By EC
March 15, 2007 10:20 PM | Link to this
www.elijahchristian.com