Dog Show

It’s difficult to say much about this show without spoiling its delightful surprises, or creating the impression that it couldn’t possibly work.  But it does. 

There is a drum-kit drummer (Alex Roper) on stage and she is very, very good at creating excitement, punctuating the action and at times improvising along with it.  The show begins with a trumpet fanfare of sorts, played by Simone French, who moments later is doing something completely different just as well.  Tom Halls and Alex Roe, upstage, in their very contrasting costumes, provide the intimate, expert, name-dropping, susurrating, soporific chit-chat commentary you might hear from the PA at a dog show (or a horse show, or a cat show, or indeed any show involving livestock of any sort, possibly including humans).

After a grinning, cheesy, desperate-to-please dance number, which looks just amateur enough to establish how skilled and professional these performers actually are, the ‘dog show’ begins.  Dogs are paraded around the arena by their owners, each one aware of the solemn judge assessing coat, leg length, carriage, teeth and conformity to breed.

Ms French, Mr Halls and Mr Roe each play – or perhaps ‘suggest’ is better – three (or possibly more) characters, one of which is a dog and another of which is the dog’s owner.  Children (and there were several in the audience) might’ve been disappointed - but they certainly were not - that there are no real dogs as such on stage, but rather the recognisable essence of some dogs - which is much funnier. 

There’s Chi-Chi, the Chihuahua (Ms French), all in pink, with a cute bow, her owner wheedling, bowing and scraping to scale.  Alfonse, the Poodle (Mr Halls), with his clouds of hair, neat little moustache, and prancing conceit is sort of Gallic, his owner a fellow who may’ve picked the wrong dog and is in terror of losing control of his wilful beast.  And Darby, the Whippet, all sleek and black and sexy and stripped back, but bendy-spined and big-eyed timid and apologetic all the same, his owner in a state of sentimental disappointment.  All this accompanied by more ‘expert’ commentary that has the audience breaking up.  And then it’s on to the Big One, the Be-All-and-End-All: Best in Show.  There can only be one winner.

You might be reminded of Christopher Guest’s movie, Best in Show, but Mr Guest was more interested in satirising the dogs’ owners (as if to say, ‘Oh, get a life!).  Cassandra Fumi and her wonderful team have another, different point to make.  It’s that, in essence, we are all dogs – dependent, on show, eager to please; we know some will win, others – most – will lose, and that Life itself is a (Dog) Show. 

I can’t say, given the number of creators here, who is responsible for what (including the risky but just right costumes), but Ms Fumi and dramaturg Alice Fitzgerald are presumably the people who hold it all together – and it does hold all together beautifully.  A second dance number, in which each performer gets a chance to shine and in which each is even more desperate to impress and be loved rounds out this highly original, gentle but pointed satire that holds the audience transfixed and laughing all the way.  The trumpet plays them off.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Sarah Walker