THEATER REVIEW
'Little Dog' has some
bite to it
But laughs so prevalent
on Broadway a bit
lacking in this go-round
JULIE YORK COPPENS
"The Little Dog Laughed" needs one more plot twist: A major Hollywood studio has to remake this sharp, audacious play into a mediocre movie.
Until author Douglas Carter Beane's 2006 satire of the film world achieves its most apt conclusion in the cinema, we'll have to be content with live stagings, like the admirable but imperfect one now at Actor's Theatre of Charlotte.
Beane's earlier hit, "As Bees in Honey Drown," is on track to become a motion picture, and the stage-to-screen conveyor ran the other way with Beane's current Broadway project, as the book writer for the musical "Xanadu." So a film version of "Little Dog" -- like "Bees," an industry fable featuring characters of unheedy ambition and uncertain sexual preferences -- seems inevitable. Maybe stage actor Julie White will get to reprise her Tony-winning performance as Diane, a shark of an agent determined to keep her gay client in the closet. More likely, an established Hollywood star (Meryl Streep in "Prada" mode?) will take over the role -- proof, if more proof were necessary, that the movie business is as brutal as Beane's script suggests.
Director Dennis Delamar and his ATC company capture the cruelty of the filmmaking machine, in whose gears we find Mitchell (Brian Robinson), a handsome actor on the brink of celebrity; Diane (Kim Cozort), the deal-maker who can get him there; Alex (Ian Bond), a male prostitute Mitchell turns to in his loneliness; and Ellen (Glynnis O'Donoghue), Alex's occasional girlfriend. The characters' plights, extreme to begin with and complicated further by Mitchell's dawning acceptance of his homosexuality, here seem credible, even poignant.
On Wednesday's sluggish opening night, though, much of the comedy in Beane's writing seemed to have been left on the cutting-room floor. Unfair as it is to compare this Charlotte staging to the Broadway version -- which I loved, mostly -- it's a fascinating question, how the same play might be hysterically funny but emotionally unaffecting in one production, and in another, more touching but at the expense of big laughs.
Underneath Beane's relentless in-jokes and copulation gags, is "The Little Dog Laughed" actually a love story? Should we believe that the tentative romance between Mitchell and Alex might lead to true happiness, if they have the courage to own it -- and if Diane will get out of their way? Delamar and his actors seem to think so, especially Robinson, whose open-hearted interplay with the talented young Bond posits a deeper connection between these "two guys hanging out," as the characters describe themselves. O'Donoghue, too, finds surprising notes of vulnerability in the snarky Ellen.
Not that there's anything wrong with all that, but I think Beane wants us to side more with Diane -- after all, he gives her the best lines. Asked for verbal assurance that a movie will respect an author's original intentions, the agent replies, "You want my word? You're asking a whore for her cherry!" Cozort has moments, but her Diane drifts far from this production's center of gravity; her rat-a-tat monologues seem to interrupt rather than drive the play's action.
And her trousers are hemmed too short. (In contrast to Stan Peal's clever set, Hallie Gray's lighting and Chip Decker's sound, Eric Grace's costumes are the one production element whose economy appears cheap.) They won't make that mistake in the movie version.
THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED
A closeted gay actor attempts to come out in this outrageous Hollywood satire by Douglas Carter Beane. Mature. 2 hours, 20 minutes.
WHEN: 8 p.m. today. Show runs various times through April 26.
WHERE: Actor's Theatre of Charlotte, 650 E. Stonewall St. ADMISSION:
$23-$28; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday performance is pay-what-you-can.
DETAILS: 704-342-2251; or www.actorstheatrecharlotte.org.
