The Little Dog Laughed

Synopsis

Set in New York, The Little Dog Laughed is a four-hander centring on Mitchell, a Hollywood actor who, out of loneliness and boredom at his ailing career, decides to call a male escort hotline. Alex answers the call and meets him in his hotel room. The two form an unlikely friendship and both get far more out of the evening’s events than either originally planned.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 21 January 2010

That little bow-wow laughed to see such fun while the dish ran away with a spoon… but the nursery rhyme did not, as far as I recall, offer a lowdown on Hollywood producers buying a stage property, a lesbian diva agent calling the shots, or her client posing as butch but calling up rent boys.

Douglas Carter Beane’s excruciating Broadway import The Little Dog Laughed – supposedly driven by a desire to update the Rock Hudson story – has been devised in the first place here by director Jamie Lloyd as an excuse for Tamsin Greig to bawl at the audience for a couple of hours, striking poses that would make even the sainted Beatrice Lillie, let alone the Statue of Liberty, blanche with embarrassment.

As the agent, Diane, she wants to railroad a deal in favour of her client, Rupert Friend’s over-tanned new star Mitchell, in the wake of an awards triumph at which, for some obscure reason, Greig starts wittering on about Br...