Customer Reviews

The Little Dog Laughed - Acting Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

A great play that had a Tony Award-winning performance by Julie White. While lacking illustrations, this script allows you to re-live this witty look at Hollywood agents and their actors. If you missed seeing it, here's your chance to laugh your head off!

Douglas Carter Beane has written an amazing dramedy for our times. The questions asked are timeless ones: What are are willing to give up for success? How much are you willing to compromise? Beyond it's relevance, it's bitingly funny. A hit.

I wish I had seen Julie White in action. The whole time I kept picturing her in the role. The play is a bit disjointed at times and hard to conceptualize, but overall it was a great read. Too bad I missed the b'way production. Maybe the revival will come around while I'm still in NYC.

Um you guys sent me the wrong book. I wanted the play by douglas carter bean. You sent me some other novel with the same title. Too much hassle to deal w/ returning it. So I through it in the trash.

An actress friend of mine, Elayne Wilks, said that you know the playwright is in trouble when the curtain rises and the play begins with an actor talking to the audience and telling them about the plot and characters (the gimmick) instead of opening with actors acting out the situation from the start (the dramatic progression). Thus it is with "The Little Dog Laughed." When the title finally comes up in the play, it is used to signify an action in the plot that is inconsequential, and that's what the play is.
It must have been an arid season on Broadway the time "Little Dog Laughed" ran. It's a slight play with predictable plotting, predictable characters, inauspicious dialogue, and an aura of phoniness that hangs over the proceedings like a miasma.
As an off-Broadway effort, it could be tolerated, but with the astronomical box office prices Broadway demands, even if the audience was papered and on twofers, it is amazing it was able to run as long as it did. I avoided it when it was on the Great White Way because the plot synopsis turned me off.
There's nothing new here that we haven't seen dozens of times before: gay characters, a male hustler who falls for a john, a male movie star who is in danger of being outed, a predator Hollywood agent (this time a female), and that old stand-by plot device--an unexpected pregnancy. Phew!!!
It's a four character play (cheaper to produce) which was in a theater east of Broadway and Seventh Avenue (probably a cheaper rent), with four relatively unknown actors (lower salaries).
What we need are great or near-great playwrights, plays with originality and creativity, not the kind of hackneyed situations and clichés found in this play. And we have to care about the characters, whether good or bad people, because they are so real to us.