With the great advances in technology, we are wowed by incredible lighting designs, clever video projection, stunning sets that move seamlessly when we go to the theatre. But sometimes, it is great to enjoy theatre without all those bells and whistles and just focus on powerful performances. This production of Dog / Actor takes such a back-to-basics approach but the results are far from basic.
Presenting two of Steven Berkoff’s short plays back to back, Stephen Smith delivers an explosive, exhilarating hour of pure theatre.
The first play, Dog, features a xenophobic Millwall-supporting London skinhead and his blood-thirsty Pitbull dog, Roy. As Smith laces up his Doc Marten boots, the soundtrack is a news report referencing the World Cup and football hooliganism as the “English Disease”. This is important to place the piece, written in 1993, in historical context of the yob culture, drunkenness, bigotry to foreigners and “dangerous dog” attacks that thrived in the Thatcher years.