Kinetic canines lend high energy for Go, Dog. Go!

By James MacKillop

An easy first-reader book for two generations, P.D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go! (1961) still remains a highly popular treat. With a minimum of words, all of them short (Eastman once worked for Dr. Seuss), the book nonetheless bursts with prodigious energy and action. Millions of American children of the 1960s and 1970s grew up on it and are now reading it with their children. Even without much of a story arc, the wife-husband team of Allison Gregory and Steven Dietz have figured out how to put Go, Dog. Go! on stage. The results are as much fun as the Gifford Family Theatre has ever delivered.

To get the right feel it’s best to start in the middle. In one sequence the colorful dogs, with flapping ears under yellow hard hats, start working with toy models of tools that construction workers use, such as a wrench, a pick and a motorized jackhammer, each making a different rhythmical noise. In an instant the different tools have merged into a rhythmic percussion session for an impromptu jivey dance session, like the broom-and-ashcan show Stomp! redone for kindergartners, but blessedly shorter. The scene doesn’t build tension, teach a lesson or answer a question, but it overflows with astonishing and almost hypnotic vitality.

The paws that refresh: Alex Gherardi and Carmen Viviano-Crafts in Gifford Family Theatre’s Go, Dog. Go!

While not quite a household name, co-playwright Dietz has been performed several times in Syracuse. The former Contemporary Theatre of Syracuse produced his Lonely Planet (April 1996) and Private Eyes (February 2001), while Robert Moss directed his version of Dracula (September 1998) at Syracuse Stage. In all three he challenges the limits of dramatic form with a kind of post-modern subversiveness. Even though Go, Dog. Go! is a small, nine-player show running 75 minutes, it can be mentioned in the same breath with The Lion King in that director-choreographer Susan Strohman was also a product of edgy, experimental theater who found ways of charming a mass public in unconventional ways.

Consider the opening scene. After a curtain speech from director Steve Braddock, a young man in a hooded sweat shirt comes in looking for a seat, when none is left. The unshaven man (Alex Gherardi) wanders the lobby and the aisles before the show, looking a bit like a harmless derelict or street person. Kids in the audience see him, even as they avoid him. When it’s clear there are no seats left, Braddock has the guy sit in a lonely chair on the stage. When he pulls back his hood, a kind of baseball cap falls from the flies, and on that cap are spotted, flapping ears. He becomes M.C. Dog, the one who leads us through all the twisting, turning action.

The moment it gets moving, Go, Dog. Go! becomes a dance show with lots of clowning that’s also a musical comedy. The nine dancing dogs are each identified by Shirley Blakeley’s distinctive brightly colored costumes, like Orange Dog (Marissa Carey and Maya Dwyer in alternate performances), Red Dog (Nick Barbato) or Yellow Dog (David Melchionne). Even in their costumes and blackened dog noses we can see the ages range from elementary school through college. 

The evidence of choreographer Elizabeth Luttinger’s extensive rehearsals becomes immediately apparent with the execution of flawless, difficult routines. Some of the children seem more adroit than the older dogs, and we note in the program that sisters Casey (Blue Dog) and Erin Whyland (Lavender Dog) have already been signed to appear in Billy Elliot at Manhattan’s Imperial Theatre next October.

The most familiar cast member is Carmen Viviano-Crafts, who had the title role in Wit’s End Players’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood last summer. Here she takes two roles, one as Spotted Dog, a kind of consort for M.C. Dog, and also the vain Hattie, who has the best running gag in the production. Hattie keeps asking M.C. Dog if he likes any of a succession of showy hats. After a deliberative pause he keeps responding, “I do not like that hat,” bringing Hattie continuing grief. This leads to a conclusion when Hattie walks in sporting a lollapalooza, and M.C. can no longer resist.

If there is any dramatic tension in Go, Dog. Go! it is between attempts to insert a sort of narrative, especially in reminding us of Eastman’s book. Upstage we see a 15-foot-tall mock-up of a book, in which there are “pages” to be turned, each a brightly colored flat. But each turn of the page can always bring the unexpected, such as M.C. Dog on roller blades, a Star Wars-like duel with light sabers, or a zipping electric toy car controlled with a remote. Nothing could beat the baseball game with a white, stitched beach ball knocked into the audience. There is occasional dialogue, like Hattie’s yearning for a compliment, but more often it’s an isolated or distorted word, like Charlie Chaplin in City Lights. In motion, however, the miming and choreography owe more to other silent film greats like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

With so much to watch, the musical score by Michael Koerner does not always draw attention to itself. Often it is witty and allusive, such as the riff on Porgy and Bess in a scene with the running line, “It’s hot out here in the sun.” As arranged here by Jessica Barbour, and performed by Luttinger on a keyboard and bass, we hear hints of Motown, Erik Satie and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Go, Dog. Go!, now being staged at Le Moyne College’s Coyne Center for the Performing Arts, 1419 Salt Springs Road, proves that young audiences have much in common with adult audiences. When given the choice, they would prefer to have fun than be preached to. Like the audiences for Susan Strohman’s Contact or Twyla Tharp’s Movin’ Out, they can be dazzled by inventiveness and excellent craft.

This production runs through June 14. For information, call 445-4523.