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by Richard Zajdlic, directed by Michael Moxham

Easy Tiger Productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

July 4-13, 2008

"Biting"

Here as part of the 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival, Easy Tiger Productions from the UK is presenting the Toronto premiere of the 90-minute play “Dogs Barking” by Richard Zajdlic, best known as a television writer for such shows as “This Life” (1996-97) and “EastEnders” (2006-08).  The play from 1999 is a scathing portrait of the yuppies of the 1990s whose materialism has suppressed any sense of morality.  The result is people who ruin their lives just when they’re beginning.

The focus of the play the relation between Neil (Fanos Xenofos) and Alex (Lisa Sheerin).  They used to live together as a couple and even took out a joint mortgage on a flat, until Neil, thinking he was moving up in status, became involved in an affair with his boss Caroline and dumped Alex.  Now Caroline has dumped Neil and we find him sleeping on the floor of Alex’s flat hoping to worm his way back into her life.  Alex, however, has already found someone else, Ben, who is as much a success in business as Neil is a failure.  Neil’s only hold over Alex is the joint mortgage and he suggests that he and Alex sell the flat and split the difference, that she buy him out or that he continues to live there.  To force her hand, he gets his dim-witted friend Ray, whom everyone calls “Splodge” (Mark Philip Compton), to help move Alex’s things out and his in.  When Alex and her sister Vicky (Maddy Lewis) catch them in the process, the war between the two escalates to violence.

The set by Rebecca Channon is minimal as is typical of Fringe shows, so that when Neil packs up Alex’s things there is basically nothing left on stage a table and two chairs.  This places the emphasis entirely on the acting, which under Michael Moxham’s incisive direction, is excellent in drawing multilayered performances from the cast.  One reason why the vicious, expletive-filled struggle between Neil and Alex is fascinating is that both actors manage to show that beneath the anger and hurt they still love each other.  Alex has moved on and is trying to put the chapter with Neil behind her.  Neil, however, wants to turn back the clock and, in his own misguided way, is using their last legal connection as a way to create an emotional connection, ignorant that this only alienates her more.  Xenofos makes Neil a person you would never want to meet, yet he shows us that desperation underlies even his worst actions.  Sheerin creates a very warm, sympathetic presence despite her harshness towards Neil because she lets us see Alex wishes she did have to take such a stance with him.

Compton’s Ray functions mostly as a kind of comic relief--slow, out of shape, too subservient to Neil.  But when we learn of his past failed relationship and when we finally see him stand up to Neil, we realize that that pain and strength were there all along.  Vicky would seem to be the only successful one of the four, but she has married for wealth and status, not love, and is now suffering for it.  Lewis shows Vicky to be tease and poseur riddled with bitterness but her performance does not match the strong level of intensity of the other three.      

The original production at the Bush Theatre in London was presented with an intermission.  It a blessing that the constraints of the Fringe do not allow this because it would dissipate the tension that Moxham so carefully allows to build.  One of the pleasures of the Fringe is to find such a fine play as this among the 148 offerings and in such a chilling, insightful production.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Fanos Xenofos, Lisa Sheerin and Maddy Lewis. ©Easy Tiger Productions.