Dystopia in "Dog Act"

Throughout history there has been a constant interest in stories that tell us what life will be like when the world comes to an end.  In a post-nuclear age, these stories have seen a great increase in popularity and relevance, and audiences are always looking for a new take on the post-apocalypse premise. 

Liz Duffy Adams' play "Dog Act" has all of the quirky details and uncompromising wit to make her post-apocalyptic riff feel as fresh and distinct as when Orwell first penned 1984.  The play follows vaudevillians Rozetta Stone (Lori E. Parquet) and Dog (Chris Wight) as they make their way across the nuclear wasteland, in search of pipe dreams that include getting to the sea and going to China to perform for the Emperor.  Rozetta, or simply Zetta, as Dog calls her, is as congenial and gregarious as her name might implie.  She is also a storyteller, and several of her stories shed light on Adams' vision of what this world is.  For instance, she tells a story at one point about "Nowls," which are really owls.  However, in this apocalypse, no one can read anymore, so everything is passed along by word of mouth, hence "an owl" can easily be combined to "nowl."  This is also supported when at numerous times in the play, characters will break into song, the tunes of which are familar, but the lyrics are all different, lost in translation somewhere along the way.  It's this kind of depth and wit that make Adams' work legitimately interesting and also feel quite credible. 

While Zetta is in charge of the acting troupe, Dog is most certainly the play's protagonist.  In this society, you are what you say you are.  In other words, a man can easily become a dog, if he says he is and he acts like one.  Dog's passive nature and unassuming presence do quite well to mask his mysterious past, which plays a very large part in the play's plot.

As Dog is forced to confront his past, he must also save Zetta from a sticky situation involving two other travelers that Zetta lets into her act.  Vera Similitude (Liz Douglas) is a vain, manipulative intellectual; in fact she's one of the last of her kind on earth.  She travels with Jo-Jo the Bald-Faced Liar (Becky Byers), a violent little spark plug who also has a gift for storytelling, though her stories are often quite gruesome and bleak.  Jo-Jo's eccentric nature and disturbingly violent temperament constitute most of the play's more comic moments.

By the time the play's tension-filled, unpredictable climax and resolution have played out; Adams will have completely sucked you in with both her masterful development of Dog and the other characters and her clever use of language.

William Ward is a staff writer. E-mail him at theater@nyunews.com.