THEATER - "Crazy for the Dog"

The title of this play is Crazy for the Dog, but it’s anybody who goes and sees this Off-Broadway run that is crazy (and not in the obsessed, lovesick way of one character, Paul, toward his dog). Rather than being a dark comedy, director Eric Parness keeps every character in such proximity to one another that it becomes a stupid drama—not cheesy enough for melodramatic laughs and not serious enough for nervous ones. This is a sophomoric attempt at The Goat, and if playwright Christopher Boal wants to salvage the good moments of the second act, he needs to do away with the first.

Granted, I’m the wrong audience for this show. I don’t have a pet—in fact, I’m allergic to most of them—and on that note, I’ve never seen the appeal of enslaving a filthy animal and drawing sustenance from the way it grows to depend on you. That said, I don’t understand why the characters get so worked up over a dog, or, as we find out later, the drowning of two “innocent” kittens. Even if you accept that this entire play is about the emotionally stunted Paul coming to terms with his love object, a kidnapped dog, having characters scream about it for ninety minutes is hardly necessary. Better to just get to the cathartic confession and allow the drama to build from there, rather than to eke out what is, to the audience, a transparent observation from minute one.

Those still struggling to be entertained by Crazy for the Dog will be further stymied by the acting. Patrick Melville plays Paul so passively that the obsession is absent and emotionless. This explains why Melville’s only action in the show is to walk really close to other actors and then to coolly explain the situation to them--but it doesn't justify it. You can’t play repression. Of course, if the negative choices ended with Melville, there might still be a show; unfortunately, the female lead, Wrenn Schmidt, plays the crazy younger sister as someone who is crazy, which isn’t an action so much as a state of being. The reason Act II works so much better than the first is that Ryan Tramont, as dog-napper Kevin, is at least trying to get something from Paul—the fault with his character is that Mr. Boal has forgotten to include what that is in his play.

It’s a shame that Crazy for the Dog impressed enough of the right people to garner an extension. It’s just a doggone shame.