Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead
by Bert V. Royal
Tuba Czar Productions
76 min / Drama / PG
Dog Sees God is a jet black comedy that takes the dearly departed Charles Shultz’s iconic Peanuts gang and then ingurgitates the magic and whimsy leaving only the bleakness, nihilism, and overwhelming social angst of our present day dystopia. The show is a sad laugh riot and at one point I cried a single tear.
Adolescence has been a freight-train disaster for those beloved childhood friends. They’re developing dependency issues, they have succumbed to the ingrained homophobia of our culture, and have lost their reason for being. Dog Sees God strips the peanuts of the magic of childhood, and thrusts them into the terrors of adolescence keeping the same despondent lens of the source material. The loss of innocence of these iconic characters (even for those only passively aware of their existence) is heart wrenching and allows for a convenient entry point into difficult subject matter.
Terry Thompson’s direction is a spot of genius – staying true to the two dimensional framework of newspaper funnies. The Tuba Czar cast’s acting is honest, minimalist, and serves the source material well. Special acknowledgement must be paid to some wholly believable piano playing, that’s not easy to do but the show loses points for a way too on the nose dance to the original theme song. The dancing was good but the theme was unnecessary.
I want to love this show, the dark comedy is delivered with ease, the rapid-fire Degrassi issue engagement is effective and the show captures my own disappointment with contemporary society with our ocean of social issues very well. But the cast doesn’t always know their lines, the cast does not yet know where to move the set between scenes. I am certain they will work this out by the second or third performance but one can only write about the show they saw, and the show I saw had some issues.
That aside, these actors are working with a great script, written by Bert V. Royal (of Easy A fame). The play weaves a beautiful, honest queer narrative into the language of commonplace homophobia. It pushes the role of voice of reason onto the mentally ill “Lucy” and transforms the once loveable Charlie Brown into a underachieving high school bully. The play is both subversive and abject; as best indicated by an act of fellatio as performed by Sally Brown on the perma-stoned Linus, while at the same time the actors elicit all the love and sympathy we get when watching “the Christmas Special.”
There are many themes, worthy of exploration, and in a longer piece I would. But one thing the play questions is, “did society only start caring about gay people when we started watching them die?” Good Grief (I’m sorry) that’s powerful stuff!
I believe in this great pumpkin. I believe in Dog Sees God, and I believe this is a show worth watching.
Dog Sees God: Confessions of Teenage Blockhead by Bert V. Royal is playing at Academic Hall (133 Séraphin-Marion) until Sunday June 18, 2017. Tickets cost $12 online and at the door. Visit ottawafringe.com for the show schedule and box office info. Apt613 is trying to see every show on opening weekend of the 2017 Ottawa Fringe Festival. Read more reviews at apt613.ca/fringe.
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