My overall impression
It’s hard to describe this play without spoiling it—there are many surprises along the way. You’ve seen the postcard, right? Housewife serving up a baking sheet full of pills? At one level, “D Is For Dog” is a stylized parody of baby boom suburban America as reflected in sitcoms of the 1950’s and early 60’s. But the family’s morning pill-popping ritual is the first of many clues that all is not what it seems in this peppy picture perfect world. My response to the play was cumulative: In Act I, I found myself amused, intrigued, my head buzzing with questions; by the end of the play, I was devastated. The cast and direction were uniformly excellent, the set design was perfect, the puppetry beautiful and haunting. The writing was strong, though I found some of its ideas and genre tropes a little facile (one example: the nameless “Corporation” that employs Mr. Rogers), but such aspects may have been a function of the playwright’s ironic intention. I admired the way the odd quirks and set-ups in Act I pay off in Act II. There was a delicious tension that ran throughout the play as the status quo was threatened. The play employs satire, sci-fi, and myth as it rushes toward its inevitable conclusion. Among the plays myriad themes and ideas, the one that struck me hardest was that of the unsustainable glittering facade in a world based on lies.
