Shakespeare’s Dog

Is this a delightful retelling of history, or a dog just following its own tale?

William O’Donnell, staff

The novelty of seeing an interpretation of William Shakespeare’s young life holds little water with me after watching MTC’s Shakespeare’s Dog. Not that all portrayal’s of the bard need to be painfully accurate (Shakespeare in Love certainly got away with its hefty fictional spin on his life), but stretching it to include an anthropomorphised canine companion named “Hooker” is a risky venture that, to me, often seemed more like a concept that may be more appropriate for a children’s production.

Not that such a tale is inappropriate for all ages, but the text could not keep my mind from questioning it. A sloppy mixture of callousness towards life during the second act, particularly, was the most disturbing to me. Hooker is a wanted dog, and other canines are knowingly being mutilated and killed in his stead, forcing Hooker to “do the honourable thing” and turn himself in to stop the suffering, only to be easily convinced otherwise not minutes later. Why is this lack of concern for honour and life all right when the resurrection of a dog, whom Hooker stabs, goes unquestioned? (Yes, they all carried daggers . . . I could not decide if they were meant to represent their claws). In fact, that same dog rises to defend Hooker from his pursuer. Are we meant to think that Hooker is allowed to be a murderer indirectly, but cannot kill anyone with his own hands (paws)? Hooker owns up to his responsibility in speech (after much baiting), which seems to be just enough for everyone else onstage, but not for me. This is all just theory, but it still unnerved me. I could not enjoy the romp of the play’s climax with these thoughts on my mind and blood on Hooker’s paws.

Also, during the climax, there was some peppering of popular Shakespeare quotes from his most famous works, such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. To these, the audience responded well, but this seemed more at the pleasure of sheer recognition, not in any sort of wit within the text’s delivery. Throughout the play, the text attempted to imitate the lyrical sensibility of Shakespeare’s writing but mixed it with crass modernisms such as loud exclamations of “Shit!” and such. It almost seemed that author, Rick Chafe, knew he might lose the audience if the dialogue were too veiled in his own poetry, therefore injecting both his modern quips and familiar quotes to rejuvenate the crowd; he should have thought better of us.

The performances were good on the whole (the dogs were fun to watch most of the time) and the set was inventive, enhancing the performances, as the players moved around in it. Despite the fact that everybody knows that Shakespeare succeeded in becoming a famous playwright, the added fiction could have offered more surprises; the play was too safe and wound up becoming too predictable for its own good.

I referred to a children’s production before, not in the sense that this play is appropriate for that sort of crowd, but that children’s shows tend to play things safer than most, and often for good reason. A play cannot ride on novelty alone, be it historical figures or anthropomorphism. The use of Hooker’s point of view for telling the story never seems to be crucial to Shakespeare’s journey as a writer, so which tale are we really following? This sort of writing needs to mature a touch more and really think about what it means to tell this type of story or else the audience might begin to think about how unnecessary Shakespeare’s dog might be.

Shakespeare’s Dog runs until March 8 at the MTC Warehouse Theatre.