[NEohioPAL] Review of CPT's "My Barking Dog"

[Bob Abelman]

CPT's 'My Barking Dog' could not be more fetching

 

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,

The Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier

Member, American Theatre Critics Association 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald 5/27/11

It is rare, indeed, for a play with a strong social agenda at its core to have such a thoroughly delightful candy coating.  The one-act, 90 minute My Barking Dog, in its world premiere at the Cleveland Public Theatre, is such a play.  

Local playwright Eric Coble has written an environmentalist tale that would make Gaylord Nelson and David Bower beam.  Yet, this story about the ramifications of civilization's continuing encroachment on the wild is as funny as it is thought-provoking, and as imaginative as it is relevant.  Coble's penchant for bizarre storytelling, physical comedy and vivid, inventive wordsmithing is on full display.  

My Barking Dog tells the story of two single, socially isolated and depressed individuals-Toby, an unemployed office manager, and Melinda, a late-shift factory worker-who meet after witnessing a wild coyote at their apartment complex.   Their curiosity about the coyote's well being turns into fascination, which transforms into fixation, which morphs into increasingly disturbing forms of fanaticism and activism.  The fine line between reality and fantasy become as blurred as the border between urban sprawl and natural habitat. 

This is a truly magnificent piece of work, and all that it has to offer is embraced without flinching by CPT's creative team.  

Director Jeremy Paul finds just the right tempo for this play.  There is tremendous fluidity from one short scene to the next, which accelerates in pace and intensity as the story demands.  Paul does a remarkable job of keeping Toby and Melinda's worlds separate on the tiny CPT performance space until their storylines combine and the play shifts effortlessly into the next gear.  

Kudos to Richard Ingraham, whose sound design inspires vivid mental images of these worlds within Scott Chapman's barren set. 

Actors Nick Koesters and Heather Anderson Boll are as made to order for this play as they have been for previous Coble productions.

Their physicality fills the stage and never fails to offer something absolutely intriguing to look at.

Their silences are as premeditated and poignant as their verbal delivery.

Their organic approach to Coble's material gives his quirky characters flesh and blood, and makes their occasionally over embellished prose conversational, the way Kenneth Branagh makes Shakespearean verbiage seem chatty.

Here are two risk-taking artisans who have found a home in Coble's craftsmanship. 

For those who like their plays playful, socio-politically astute but not preachy, and performed to perfection, well, it doesn't get much better than My Barking Dog.

My Barking Dog continues through May 28 at Cleveland Public Theatre's Storefront Studio, 6415 Detroit Avenue.  For tickets, which range from $10 to $25, call 216-631-2727 or visit www.cptonline.org.
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