It has happened, as we feared. Something (a Trump presidency
perhaps?) has brought about the apocalypse. Liz Duffy Adams’ fiercely
intelligent DOG ACT (@ Theatre on Fire through April 16th) about the
aftermath is named for a vaudeville act because in the (not so) distant future
the cream has risen to the top. The arts have triumphed at last. Actors are the
treasured survivors. Scavengers roam the scarred countryside, taking and
killing prisoners but they’re not allowed to touch theater folk.
Diego Arciniegas’ exquisite production for TOF should be on
everyone’s must see list. Adams’ opulent
script crackles with energy in the hands of six extraordinary performers. If
you saw the Lyric Stage’s production of Adams’
OR, a few years back, you’re familiar with her elegant prose and her resonant
references. DOG ACT is overflowing with wild allusions, hilarious
neo-Shakespearian repartee and gorgeous harmonies when the actors break into
song, as actors through the ages are wont to do.
Adams’ cautionary tale is set in the Northeast of the former U.S.A.
Two “vauders,” a charismatic singer/actress (Liz Adams) and a remarkable dog
(Stewart Evan Smith) “who doesn’t write but has an impressive command of the
language” pull their theatrical cart to the side of what used to be a road to
rest. They’re on their way to perform for “the King of China,” not realizing of
course where China
is or that it probably isn’t a place where “all the people are wise.” They’ve
heard tell of a “tall tower of a woman you can climb and look out of her eyes.”
It would seem that both history and geography have been obliterated along with
a vast portion of the population.
They’re soon joined by two “roadsters” who claim tribal kinship
as actors: Vera Similitude (Kaylyn Bancroft) who swears she always “tells the
truth” but will “obfuscate style” and her sidekick (Marge Dunn), the “short
fused storyteller.” When asked what destruction Vera and Jo-Jo saw up north,
they reply that they only reached as far as the “great Canadian barrier wall.”
Now I know that Adams wrote her play quite a
number of years ago, way before the current political free-for-all, but a wall
erected by Canadians to keep us out? It’s positively prescient. And so is
naming one of the marauders ‘Coke,’ as in Koch Brothers! (Not Adams’
intent, of course; She’s referring to the relics of our age, unearthed by the
clueless scavengers.)
Instead of being bombed “back to the stone age,” the
apocalypse has left these survivors in the quasi-Middle Ages. Instead of a
medieval Morality Play, the troupe performs a Mortality play to explain as best
they can how they came to this sorry state of affairs. Everyone loves a play,
including the savage “lost boy” scavengers (Avery Bargar and Tim Hoover), who
might have been rude mechanicals if this were a few centuries later. They’re
certainly rude and delightfully vulgar.
Adams plays fast and loose
with time so that Bargar can sport a WWI leather aviator’s cap and Jo-Jo can
carry an Etch-a-Sketch by her side. Erica Desautels’ inventive costumes add yet
another layer of discovery to the mix. Eric Hamel’s inspired sound design, too,
underscores the catastrophic environmental damage done to the planet. Just
before the rapid unnatural climate changes in Adams’
brave new world, the earth belches, sounding like it is being sucked into the
vortex. There are so many clever twists and turns, so much rapid wordplay, it’s
almost impossible to take in at one sitting. I can’t wait to go back and absorb
what I missed the first time.