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‘Little Dog Laughed’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A-
Douglas Carter Beane’s “The Little Dog Laughed” is a Hollywood Babylon-style torcher about a good-looking matinee idol, the woman who teaches him how to love and the desperate prostitute who threatens to destroy the man and his muse.
If you believe this description of the new play at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square, you’re in complete denial, Mary.
As it turns out, the handsome movie star at the center of this crisp, campy, titillating comedy of manners is a self-loathing closet case. His feminine sidekick is a leggy, leather-chewing lesbian talent agent with the maternal instincts of a tarantula. And his hooker with a heart of gold is a sexually conflicted “rent boy” with a girlfriend on the side.
As directed by Alan Kilpatrick on the theater’s intimate Alley Stage, “The Little Dog Laughed” is an irresistible menage a quatre that mixes the salaciousness of “Queer As Folk” with the satirical edge of “Entourage.” Prepare yourself for male nudity, simulated sex, raunchy language and a soundscape featuring Rufus Wainwright’s lyrical musings. “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” anyone?
A zingy free-for-all with bite, “Little Dog” unfolds as efficiently as the Murphy Bed at centerstage.
Just when you the thought the American film industry had knocked down the closet doors that concealed the likes of Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift, along comes Beane’s delightful dip in the dangerously shallow end of the show-biz vanity pool, where the twin gods of hypocrisy and ambition still rub their bronzed, botoxed cheeks.
If you think “Miss Nancy is laying it on too thick” (to quote one of Beane’s many zingers), you haven’t witnessed the stiletto-heeled, power-suited Diane (LaLa Cochran) order a Cobb salad, chew on a business contract or catch her client in flagrante delicto with his new toy. In the role that won Broadway’s Julie White a Tony Award, Cochran’s Diane is the sizzling, name-calling, wildly entertaining epicenter of this modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah episode.
Award-winning actor-hunk Mitchell (Chad Martin) is so lonely and soused in his hotel room that he sends out for company, then promptly dozes off. But hustler Alex (Ben Reed) doesn’t just take the money and run; he falls hopelessly, droolingly in love. Meanwhile, back at the disco, shopaholic Ellen (Kelly Criss) — who still has feelings for Alex — absconds with her sugar daddy’s credit card and eventually tightens the weave of this tangled tale with the contents of her suburban mother’s craft room. (You’ll see.)
If it weren’t for Diane and Ellen, Alex and Mitchell’s clumsy romance wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. Martin’s Mitchell seems appropriately numb and in denial. Reed’s Alex is adorably sweet and quirky — with eyebrows like Cupid’s arrows. And Criss’ Ellen is positively mesmerizing as the spoiled-rotten, rapier-sharp 24-year-old woman in love with the troubled two-timer. “I wouldn’t be able to identify one of my emotions in a police line-up,” she says at one point.
With this gleeful expose of Hollywood’s sexual politics, Marietta’s Theatre in the Square once again serves up the kind of debauchery you’d expect to find at an edgy in-town ensemble. With great comedic panache, Beane makes a stinging social statement. Beware the cute little dog.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through April 27. $15-$20. Theatre in the Square, Alley Stage, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com
Bottom line: Hollywood hypocrisy exposed with glee and bite.
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