Dog

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman

Hollywood Fringe Festival

Thru June 25

RECOMMENDED

Ben Moroski won a Best of Fringe award in 2012 for The Vicious Minute  and a Top of the Fringe award in 2014 for his solo performance of The Wake. This year he’s back at The Fringe with his latest solo piece, Dog— a downer of a tale nonetheless presented with the same singular, mesmerizing intensity he brought to his earlier ones.

This time his character —we never learn this character’s given name but his yesteryear buddies call him Dog — is a 30-something alcoholic, prone to blackout bouts of drinking and other diverse forms of destructive behavior.  “Dog” has recently been given the heave-ho by his girlfriend Diane after their small pet dog somehow fell — or leapt! — from their balcony to his death. Meanwhile, an unusual accident at his place of employment — a heavy chair fell on his head—has left him out of focus and out of work. A trip with Diane to introduce her to his parents has now been stripped of purpose, but he nevertheless decides to go alone; along the way he indulges in endless shots at the airport bar, while ruminating on the pleasures of anonymous stopover inebriation.

The rest of the story takes place in his hometown where a “big” football game is scheduled between the home team – for which the narrator was once mascot, hence the source of his nickname — and a serious opponent. We’re offered poignant glimpses into his relationship with his parents, his initially promising encounter with another woman, and the raucous experience of tailgating, the practice of partying before a football game. (This term had to be explained to me, as, never a fan of football, I knew nothing of it before.)

While the narrative in The Wake took a peculiar dark twist, Dog, directed by Jordan Lane Shappell, is a more straightforward portrait of a tormented soul — sociable on the outside, eaten away on the inside with self-loathing and despair. In its breadth and depth, Moroski’s performance embraces it all. And, as bleak as the story, the show is something else; master storyteller that he is, Moroski engages us throughout, drawing laughter from this dark chronicle and a sense of our common humanity from its inevitably disturbing conclusion.

https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/7602?tab=details

Running time: approximately 1 hour