Review – The Little Dog Laughed – Garrick

On Monday night I went to see The Little Dog Laughed at the Garrick. Little Dog is about actor Mitchell Green (Rupert Friend, well muscled but otherwise flat), who starts the evening defining himself as not gay while calling rent boys to his hotel room. His agent Diane (razor sharp Tamsin Greig) wants to keep him marketable and the truth in the closet. In this case, the truth is said Manhattan rent boy, Alex (Harry Lloyd) who’s also in denial about liking men. Only (hurray!), after a heartwarming scene about formative early sexual experiences (the “merit badge that dare not speak its name”), the guys do admit they’ve got the hots for each other, and it’s trousers down and time to get the gay on. Next problem? Alex’s girlfriend, Ellen (Gemma Arterton), and to say much more would ruin the fun.

Little Dog Laughed is a really odd show to see now, newish, in 2010 (it was written in 2005). I can accept that there still might be people in America and England that are uncomfortable with being gay, but, given how many actors are gay, it just all seemed a little hard to swallow. The whole thing would be completely intolerable if the agent weren’t a lesbian, but, since she is, her “homophobia” really reads as simply an accurate reading of what the American viewing public wants to see (an actor “women can dream of, and men can envy”). Her desire to suppress whatever truth about her “property” she needs to in order to keep him marketable is venality, ultimately, except … well … a 30 year old gay actor who is actually still not willing to admit to himself what gender he is attracted to? I couldn’t buy it. The playwright attempts to jazz the whole thing up with some really fresh dialogue, and succeeds in making a brilliant “actor and his manager negotiate with a playwright” scene, but as an overall work it felt clunky, like it had been written in college by someone destined to go into sitcoms.

I’ve got to give a nod to the costume and set designer for a beautiful palette of black, white and grey – I’m not used to having the actors match the furniture, but this worked for me. And Greig was just hot as the clawing, game-playing agent willing to step all over her client’s personal life to get herself ahead of the Hollywood game. She struggled a bit in the opening scene (the audience interaction was very clunky especially given how unresponsive we were), but went on to basically set the stage on fire for the rest of the show. Friend wasn’t really able to match her, unfortunately, but like Jessica Rabbit, I think this was more about how he was written than a bad performance. Lloyd seemed human and believable, but Arterton wasn’t able to make her character seem like anything more than filler while the set was being changed.

A little bit about the Garrick: the theater is one that I remember both fondly and with aggravation, from when I saw Zorro there; while I loved the show, I was incredibly frustrated with the blocked view of the upper two-thirds of the stage from my way-under-the-balcony seats. Fortunately there was no swinging from chandeliers or second story swordplay (or singing) to drive me batty in my row Q seats – just two little scenes in which someone stood in an open doorway which was blocked (grr!) utterly by the light clamped on to the roof above. Aaargh! Garrick, you win again! But, you know, it was kind of a potluck with the seats anyway, and, as I was asked afterward, I was entertained sufficiently to not mind. Still, this was a fairly slight night overall.

(This review is for a performance that took place on Monday, January 19th, 2010. The Little Dog Laughed continues booking through 10th Apr 2010. A review of the

Review – “Zorro” (the musical) – Garrick Theater

Also known as “The Boots of Zorro” if you were so unfortunate as to be sitting with us in the back of the stalls. Entire songs were sung during which we mostly only saw Zorro’s feet!

While this was a really fun show, I’d like to warn people off of the bad seats. While my £23 tickets from LastMinute were perhaps appropriately priced for what I got (and it was still entertaining all the way back in the crap seats), I was personally embarassed when I realized I’d bought seats that hid about a third of the action (we could only see about seven feet up from the floor of the stage, and much is done in the upper levels of the set, such as Zorro flying in on ropes and such, and people singing and talking to people elsewhere). I thus looked about to confirm which seats are crap so that you can know what you’er getting into – I mean, it’s not really a “half priced” seat if there’s no way in hell you would have paid £55 for it in the first place, right? So:

Row Q back to Z: rotten sightlines, 1/3 of the production is not visible.
L forward decent, except on the far sides: avoid H 1-3 and 21-23, and K and L 1-4 and 20-23 – these are obstructed by the overhang.

Anyway, grousing aside: Zorro is basically a staged B movie, with bonus flamenco music and some very English panto-y songs tossed in. It is not deep, it is not attempting to copy any movie version I know of, it is not trying to Phantom or Cats, and there’s not a lot of concern about historical accuracy (and, my God, the very English pronunciation of “Los AnGuhLeez” by the “Alcade” at the beginning of the show made me laugh – it was like listening to Bugs Bunny).

The songs are mostly forgettable (other than the one about how women “like a man who can thrust”), but the flamenco is actually quite decent for staged (i.e. non-improv) stuff and, combined with the quite good Flamenco singing (something I seriously did not expect), really added a lot to the show. (I quite like Flamenco and was expecting the worst, but my only real complaint was the costuming not being right for the music.) They even found a way to make it make sense to have Flamenco (and gypsies) in a show set in California – they came over from Spain with Zorro! The dancing overall (which had far more than just flamenco) was fine enough, though occasionally it veered into bad Martha Graham slash Pat Benatar music video territory.

I must say, though, that the cast really made this show in a way that surpassed all of the cheese elements and turned it into a really good night out. Matt Rawle, our Zorro, had that Johnny Depp “yum” factor that made me think the movie could really have been so much better. His swordplay wasn’t so great, but hey, I blame the person who designed the fight, not him. Emma Williams as romantic lead Luisa was fun – she managed to not get into the whiny prude element of the character (whew!) (and had a bit of a Grease/Sandy makeover at the end of the show), and masked her lack of Flamenco skills well enough by being carried over the heads of the other characters during a key scene.

My favorites, though, were Nick Cavaliere as “Garcia,” the nerdy guy working for the bad guy, who started off looking like a spineless bootlicker but displayed more roundess as a character (rather than just pulchritude) as the evening wore on (as well as providing the most comic moments). Head scene stealer was Inez (Leslie Martinez), whose gypsy bad girl was just a pile of fun to watch. I don’t think she is a brilliant dancer, but she definitely showed star power and made the night a good one. Without these two characters, who could have been played/written in a very two dimensional way, the show would never have been such a good time.

If you’re considering seeing this, I would encourage you to do so. Pretty well from the first appearance of the “Mark of the Lesser Than Sign” (as that’s all I could see from my seats), I was enjoying myself. There was a wee bit of nudity (a booty flash from a lady), but other than some double entendres, I consider it fairly suitable family fare, and a fun night out to boot. Have a glass of sangria or two before the show, avoid the crap seats in the second half of the stalls, and I think it will be just about a perfect evening! (Thanks to the Westend Whingers for the recommendation – I would never have bothered otherwise.)

(This review was for a performance seen on Wednesday, October 15th. Note that later a friend of mind teased me about the Curse of LowRow, which is when I get what I deserve for being so cheap with my theater choices, but the occasional utterly crap seat is well worth the opportunity to see so many shows which I could otherwise not afford. And hey, I can – almost – always go back, and in this case I will.)