You’re a Must See, Dog Sees God at Old Academy Players

by Ash Kotter

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead is not a comfortable evening of theater, but in the hands of Philadelphia’s Old Academy Players, it is most certainly a powerful one. For those who appreciate a heads up, please consider this a content warning: this story engages directly with several layers of mature content. Not simply the use of explicit language, but add themes of violence, on top of sexual identity topics, lewd descriptions of sex acts, use of ableist language, mental health, eating disorders, and underage substance abuse topped off with a cartoonishly sized bag of blow. 

Playwright Bert V. Royal explores these themes deliberately while parodying the world and characters of a beloved comic strip that defined generations of childhoods. A comic strip so cherished that I’ve made a quiet bet with myself to not reference it “directly by name” in writing this review. A story with adult themes, as told by teenagers reimagined from children’s cartoon characters, is far from a gimmick for shock value. Even if you think it is, its gimmick proves its point.

Before anyone even calls places, the creative team behind Dog Sees God at Old Academy Players makes a subtle but loaded promise to lobby dwellers. Isolated on its own little table, a wimpy pine branch greets you as you enter the house, nailed to two wooden planks and dressed up with a singular red Christmas bauble. It’s an unmistakable symbol we’ve grown to associate with disappointment underscored by optimism.  It’s meant to make you go, “Aww! I watched that every year!” But the little half-sapling is both a welcome and a warning to unassuming audience members. 

The true meaning of Christmas in the flesh.

As for me, I had seen this play before. The student-produced drama club on campus staged this when I was in college, which is almost hilariously topical given how quickly this production sets itself in time. Relevant context: the original production premiered Off-Broadway in 2005. I graduated from high school in 2006 and from college in 2010. 

I hope the deliberate intention was to produce this as a period piece, despite the program telling us we’re in the nondescript time of “not too long ago.” A pre-show playlist (Sound Designer Steve Hnatko) rolls through the house with songs you could have pulled straight off Y100 in the early 2000s. The Offspring asks, “The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?” MCR warns, “Teenagers scare the living shit out of me.” Wheatus reminds us that they’re “just a Teenage Dirtbag, baby.” After the curtain speech, the floor drops with that “Mad World” cover made famous by its use in the 2001 indie psychological thriller, Donnie Darko (now a cult classic, and my forever comfort film). No notes, my former teenage self felt celebrated.

Dog Sees God demands of its team a collective discipline and shared vision, and Director Norman G. Burnosky, Jr. assembles a committed ensemble, as evidenced by the specificity of their work. You must see this show for the strength of the actors and their command of their instruments. Their finesse helps expose a particularly effective duality in Burnosky’s direction: the recognizable tropes of their characters emerge when they serve the moment, but their outlines evolve into something more human and lived-in throughout their journeys. 

At the center of the story is Brian Balduzzi as CB, whose literal doe-eyed sincerity anchors the show. Talking to his long-lost pen pal while looking to us for a shoulder to lean on, Balduzzi allows CB’s moral questioning to feel characteristically existential. His emotional openness and restraint make the final moments of the show feel earned and moving.

William Reid’s Beethoven is altogether tender, intense, cunning, coy, and wounded, and he charges the tension in every scene he enters. The weight of Beethoven’s history with every other character is communicated as much through what Reid withholds as what he reveals. Micah Wagman as Matt is hilariously unsettling; his bravado and “dirty” jokes mask his desperation and fear. If that desperation doesn’t read, one of the play’s central conflicts goes unsupported, but Wagman “penned” it on the nose.

Ross Weisman deserves every laugh he gets for his portrayal of Van, driving humor through stoner logic (our “sweet babboo” swapped his security blanket for weed). Taylor Rouillard gives us a profane, Judy-Funnie-coded CB’s Sister and carries one of the show’s lessons through her earnest performance: teenage evolution often asks you to evolve too quickly.

Cassidy Leyendecker as Tricia is a “wintergreen” Regina George, with a sense of entitlement and casual cruelty that is appalling and entirely familiar. Isaura Sanguinetti as Marcy plays the mean-girl sidekick with a looseness suggesting a party girl who got kicked out of the National Honor Society, punctuated by flashes of sharp recall that hint at who she used to be. Annie Hnatko sincerely delivers an unreliable narrator as Van’s Sister, and balances “nickel and dime analyst” with sarcastic dark humor and occasional menace. 

Production stills of “the gang.”

             Reserving stage space for compelling circumstances to fill it, the director-designed set is wholly uninterested in adding spectacle the story doesn’t need. The ghost of a red airplane doghouse center stage, a simple brick wall to lean on,  a piano to the left. The loneliness in the empty space works like a charm here. Costumes (Jay Steinberg) help the audience identify their old friends by using color and overall silhouette to echo the original comic DNA. Lighting (designed by Steve Hnatko) is simple, distinguishing emotional spaces and shifting tone without drawing attention to itself. There’s a joy in the simplicity of these choices, because everything else in this story is complicated.

Who should I even thank for their TLC with the props? I honk-style laughed at the attention to detail: Van’s bong paired with a “high as a kite” children’s book that looked straight out of My Little Pony territory, the on-brand cafeteria trays, even the historically accurate lineup of alcohol:  Pinnacle Whipped Cream Vodka, Four Loko, Malibu, Bud Light (it was very circa 2008).

What makes this team’s Dog Sees God resonate is not simply their willingness to tackle this challenging material, but also their clarity on why they’re telling this story. Burnosky and this entire team demonstrate trust in the script, trust in the audience, and trust in each other to take a running leap under the “rain cloud.” If you allow yourself the room to be moved, the experience will leave you feeling comforted at the end, when we finally get the mail we’ve been waiting for after all these years:

“Just know that there’s someone out there thinking about you. Maintain in your heart all that keeps you who you are. You are a good man.”

Dog Sees God runs at Old Academy Players for two more weekends through January 25th. Get your tickets, before they get ripped out from under your feet: https://oldacademyplayers.org/shows/dog-sees-god-confessions-of-a-teenage-blockhead/