Little Dog Laughed Reviews

Talkin Broadway is Mixed-to-Positive (a rave for White):

"By the time this becomes the most important question facing the characters of The Little Dog Laughed, it's long been rhetorical for the audience watching Douglas Carter Beane's new play unfurl at the Cort. And the two women asking it are the reason why.

For better or for worse, it's impossible to separate Diane the Hollywood agent from the actress playing her, Julie White. While the question of happiness is a frequently a crucial bargaining chip for Diane, whose life is one endless negotiation, it's nowhere on White's radar. She's too busy making people happy to pay heed to such petty concerns.

Thank goodness she is. White, who originated Diane when The Little Dog Laughed first opened at Second Stage in January, is giving one of the most resplendent comic performances I've ever seen. It's not just the intricate details she works into Diane's stance (regally poised, but precarious), her voice (a velvet-lined sanding belt), and even her hair - which, when its owner is at her tensest and most alert, takes on a life of its own. But that this shark in designer shoes, this power player with a pulse of publicity, is not only grittily hilarious but capable of having her heart broken - that's an accomplishment worth celebrating.

White's work, which has only improved in the last 10 months, is of the rare kind that sends palpable surges through an audience. Not just in anticipation of what she'll do or say next - for example, ordering a salad or coercing a reluctant writer to turn his play into a movie are in her mind - as in practically no one else's - exactly the same thing - but in how she'll keep upping the stakes. That she kicks off the evening with an extravagantly oversized monologue about her rising-star client Mitchell Green's public refutation of rumors of his homosexuality by kissing her at an awards ceremony, and yet tops it time and time again over the next two hours, is the art of a superwoman.

For all the talk about Christine Ebersole down the street in Grey Gardens, to my eye it's White's performance that stands out as one of the most exciting of last season Off-Broadway, and hands down the most exciting yet this Broadway season. But much like Ebersole, White faces a difficult challenge: The show and the other people are in it never quite reach her skyscraping level. If White's every word lures you to the edge of your seat, when the theatrical lens of Beane and director Scott Ellis focuses elsewhere, sitting back somehow seems more appropriate.

That's not to say that the rest of The Little Dog Laughed is a loss. If anything, the show is sharper and more cohesive now than when it opened Off-Broadway, with White and her castmates having refined their performances to better highlight Diane's role at the center of the story. (Before, she felt a bit like an uncomfortably inflated featured character; now, she's the dynamic, worthy lead.) And two replacement actors, Tom Everett Scott and Ari Graynor, strengthen vital moments and tie up loose ends their predecessors could not.

But the story of Mitchell (Scott), whose life in the closet is impeding his burgeoning superstardom, still feels like it's on less than completely firm ground. It all hinges on Mitchell's relationship with Alex (Johnny Galecki, repeating his Off-Broadway role), a rent boy he calls one drunken night in New York, but which develops with rapidity rather than specificity. From spending the night together to spending the day together to considering spending a life together, Mitchell and Alex - both of whom consider love a foreign language - move faster than Beane can in making their union believable.

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/LittleDogLaughed.html

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As she said in her Broadway.com interview, "2 words: Angela. Lansbury."

Boy, I'm hoping for some really good reviews for this show.

I'd like to see when I'm in New York in March, but with the current box office receipts I don't think it will make it that long.

Maybe some raves will help it hold on...

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/theater/reviews/14dog.html?adxnnl=1&ref=theater&adxnnlx=1163474566-IH1jDFXHCZjGRuKxxVVmsw


Great marks for Julie.

Variety is Mixed-to-Positive:

"Move over, Ari Gold, Diane is back in town. Hollywood agents rarely get ahead by being gentle negotiators, but the fierce wheeler-dealer played by Julie White in "The Little Dog Laughed" has all the sensitivity of a tsunami. A supreme manipulator whose scorn for the industry she represents in no way compromises her adherence to its rules, White's Diane made Douglas Carter Beane's uneven patchwork of a comedy enjoyable regardless of its flaws at Off Broadway's Second Stage earlier this year. Buoyed by one central recasting improvement, the play offers both more and less of the same in its move to Broadway.
Like Beane's "As Bees in Honey Drown," "Little Dog" is assembled around the acid-dipped caricature of a female monster in a superficial culture obsessed with fame and success. The playwright gives his diva a series of arias -- monologues or near-monologues -- that play like comic routines stitched not always seamlessly into the fabric of a broader, four-character narrative.

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A better physical fit for the role than his Off Broadway predecessor Neal Huff, Scott is terrific in the early scenes, in which his easygoing manner and stream of wisecracks only half cover his underlying nervousness and unfulfilled need. He's a big, likable lug -- albeit one far too verbally adroit in Beane's quick-witted dialogue. If he's less persuasive when the character is forced to make choices, it's due largely to the playwright's failure to ground the relationship between the two men in reality.

Galecki's character is more satisfyingly developed, and the actor balances Alex's cocky, street-smart demeanor with glimpses of an unguarded emotional rawness that make him almost an alien in this play.

The weakest link is Alex's sort-of-girlfriend Ellen. As clever and funny as the writing is, Beane's quip factory often functions at the expense of character development -- particularly so in this case. While Zoe Lister-Jones was abrasive in the role at Second Stage, Ari Graynor seems stiff and uncomfortable as the smart-ass party girl, sucking the air out of the play whenever she's onstage. Ellen is such an unappealing character that her intended vulnerability gets lost and it's hard to care much about her predicament, which becomes fodder for Diane's Machiavellian meddling.

Scott Ellis' production has a slick, stylish look thanks to Allen Moyer's pop-art set and the electric color palette of Donald Holder's lighting, mixing bold primary shades with hot pastels.

But the play's flimsiness -- its nagging shallowness, inconsistency of tone and over-reliance on direct address -- is exposed more harshly in the larger space and the burden placed more heavily on White's shoulders.

Her whip-smart performance is a comic whirlwind, bristling with cool calculation, acerbic observation and a gleeful, unapologetic awareness that Diane's needs are paramount and everyone else's are to be compromised at will. While there seems no inherent reason for Beane to make her a lesbian, as a vehicle for the playwright's amusing roasting of Hollywood, she's sharp as a tack. Perhaps the real achievement is that White makes her such an ingratiating villain. But the actress has become a little screechy in the role, the urge to crank it up a notch steering her toward cartoonishness.

Given the scarcity of viable new comedies on Broadway, audiences no doubt will be tickled by the satire's risque humor and hint of topicality. White's rape-and-pillage comic turn and the barrage of witty zingers here might arguably be enough to justify Beane's mainstage upgrade."


http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932110.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

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Theatremania is Mostly Negative:

"Comedies about cynical New York-Los Angeles bicoastals tend to fall into two categories: sophisticated and pseudo-sophisticated. Douglas Carter Beane's The Little Dog Laughed, the comic tale of a rising Hollywood star's fling with a Manhattan rent boy, falls with a thud in the latter category. It wants to be meaningful about corrupted contemporary ethics but it's just annoying -- much like a little dog yipping at a bigger dog across the street. Moreover, this Broadway production -- a belated transfer from Second Stage where it bowed last winter -- is even louder and thuddier than before. And, with its inch-deep Machiavellian slant, it's even somewhat out of touch with these post-election times.

Beane's comedy has one strong selling point: his most garrulous character, Diane, a lesbian agent played by Julie White with all stops out -- and no one stopping her, including director Scott Ellis. Diane has her jaundiced eye fixed on the big prize, getting her less-than-savvy movie star client, Mitchell Green (Tom Everett Scott), to star in the adaptation of a New York stage hit about -- uh-oh -- homosexuals. But when he hooks up with hooker-with-a-heart Alex (Johnny Galecki), and the two fumble towards as unlikely a relationship as you'll come across, Diane's big plans threaten to come tumbling down.

Making innumerable ironic eye-rolls and putting just about all her speeches into theatrical italics, White seizes the opportunity to steamroll the audience -- and she does so with more gale-wind force than she did in the smaller auditorium. Indeed, she is so persuasive that she manages to make amusing a character who is to today's Hollywood what Karl Rove was to Washington, D.C. right up until this past week. Never mind that Diane is an immoral schemer, whom many observers adore across the figurative footlights but would run from so fast in real life that innocent pedestrians would be flattened. Never mind that she's a smart dresser. (Jeff Mahshie picked out her chic suits and understated frocks). The bottom line is that playwright Beane has supplied her with some super-duper wisecracks. The one where she's asked to give a naïve New York playwright "her word" and replies "You're asking a whore for her cherry" elicits wall-shaking applause. And it's not the only doozy met with clamorous response.

But what White's commanding performance really does is distract attention from a play that has no substance, but is slicker than Allen Moyer's gliding, sliding set. What does Beane say about selling out that hasn't been said before? What is he saying about Hollywood downplaying homosexual love that hasn't been said before? Moreover, the four characters through whom he's trying to say these things are pretty but weightless. "

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/9456

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Newark Star-Ledger is Positive:

"It's not all that unusual for performers to stop a musical with the excitement of their singing and/or dancing.

However, when droll acting literally stops a nonmusical comedy -- briefly putting matters on pause for explosive laughter, applause, even cheers from the audience -- well, that's something extraordinary.

Julie White accomplishes just such an amazing feat several times in her tremendously funny portrayal of a semi-heartless show-biz agent in "The Little Dog Laughed."

White has been assisted in no small measure by playwright Douglas Carter Beane's sulfuric wit, but her bravura technique smacks his satirical material right out of the Broadway ballpark.

Opening yesterday at the Cort Theatre, "The Little Dog Laughed" is Beane's corrosive study in contemporary Hollywood mores regarding celebrities' private sex lives and their public images.

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The other performances are capable enough -- Galecki's conflicted rent boy even is oddly touching -- but they pale somewhat beside the brilliance of White's memorable artistry. Not only does the actress incisively portray cynical Diane with a sort of smiling exasperation for clueless humanity in general, White also functions superbly as the playwright's wry messenger, easily captivating viewers with her bright blue eyes, serpentine gestures and killer timing.

Earlier this year, "The Little Dog Laughed" proved a must-see off-Broadway hit for Second Stage Theatre. Anybody who couldn't snare a ticket then would be wise to catch the show now. The play remains a laugh-out-loud lampoon of Hollywood humbuggery, and White is a marvel."

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1163483335234830.xml&coll=1

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COOL! Cant wait to go now. Just snagged 3rd row seats!

Mr. Huff was my favorite part of the off-Broadway cast...I preferred him even to White -- he just stayed with the story, and didn't push for results. I think they made a mistake by not offering it to him. But, I guess it is within the realm of possibility that he wasn't available. Anyone know the story?

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While I've enjoyed Huff in other roles and thought he did his best with this one, I never believed him as a young "hot" movie star type. I just don't think he has that "look" -- and apparently the creative team agreed. I think if Huff were to succeed in Hollywood, it would be as a character actor, not a star. Scott fits that aspect of the role better (I know that he, along with Matthew Lillard and a few other B-level "it" boys were approached). He's also more of a "name" than Huff.

I also thought that while the main problem with the girlfriend role was that it was underwritten (and it still is), Lister-Jones just didn't bring much of a presence to it. Graynor's an improvement, though it's still the weakest of the four parts in the play.

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Suggestions whether to go or not?
I can get seats when I go this weekend (26 dollar Balcony ones), and want to know if I should.

Absolutely see it. I had a blast. Julie White is hilarious.

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