Writer and Director: Daniel Passi
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Frankenstein novel should be almost impossible to stage but Overtone Theatre has just about pulled it off with their stripped-back production at the Golden Goose Theatre. The absurdist story of a doctor who gives a dog the testicles and pituitary gland of a man is clearly told but some odd directorial decisions threaten to undermine this clarity.
Bobby is a stray dog and because he is on the streets he is, of course, a proletariat. This is 1920s Moscow, after all. But despite his working-class pride, he is drawn to the bourgeois Professor Phillip, a doctor who has a consulting room in a lavish flat. The professor tempts Bobby with chunks of salami and before he knows it, Bobby is restrained on an operating table. He’s given the testicles and pituitary gland of a young thug who has just died in a knife fight. What kind of man will Bobby become?
While Bulgakov’s novel is about social class and revolution, it’s tempting to see Bobby, now funnily called Penguin Penguinovich, as AI, another creature born inside a laboratory. What kind of rights will AI demand in the very near future? And how will humans be able to control their new inventions? The Heart of a Dog is fascinatingly pertinent for today.
In a cast of seven, Jack Tivey stands out as the posh but beleaguered professor while Oliver Lyndon is wonderfully coarse, playing the human-dog as some kind of Caliban. Denisa Elena also puts in good work as the dog before he has his unnatural surgery.
The problems come with the staging. Director Daniel Passi has chosen to place the play in traverse with the audience on either side of a long space. It brings the action closer, obviously, but other than that it adds little but stiff necks, especially when key scenes, like the operation itself, are staged behind one section of the audience. Another perplexing choice means that Overtone Theatre brings its own lights rather than using those of the Golden Goose. A few lamps are scattered around the space, but many scenes are played in full lighting, and again, there seems to be no reason to do this. Very quickly, it brings one out of the story, watching instead other members of the audience and the few that scurry out to use the bathroom.
Still, these experimental choices are to be admired even if they don’t quite succeed. It would be interesting to see this play, which is often chilling and comical in equal measures, on a normal stage in the dark. This would also mean that there would be less running around by the cast which is also distracting. Such a horror story as this needs a more focused approach.
Runs until 29 April 2023
