Review: The Little Boy Laughed

Anna Ilic’s dramatic city-skyline backdrop whets the appetite as you take your seat for The Little Dog Laughed.

And from the moment that the ballgown-clad publicist/agent Diana (Alexandra Fowler) glides through the audience, delivering what turns out to be just the first of her pithy monologues — this one about Mickey Rooney completely destroying the mood established by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, just by making an appearance — you realise that you’re in for a real treat.

American playwright Douglas Carter Beane sports a very witty and sardonic pen and uses it to great effect in giving Hollywood and its shallowness a thorough going over.

You wouldn’t have thought that gayness would be a problem for aspiring actors these days, but that’s certainly not how Diana sees it when Mitchell (James Millar), her next big thing for the silver screen, starts falling in love with Alex (Lindsay Farris), a New York rent boy whose girlfriend Ellen (Alexa Ashton) has quite a liberal attitude towards his means of making a living.

The occasional covert homosexual fling wouldn’t be a problem, but a serious, public relationship with Alex is quite out of the question if Diana is to use Mitchell’s boy-next-door appeal to push him up the ladder of stardom and make her own big bucks.

But Diana has a cunning plan that might just work — marry Mitchell off to Ellen, move Alex into their home as live-in help, and create a menage-a-trois that keeps everyone happy.

And is the play successful? Absolutely. The great lines simply fly from Douglas Carter Beane’s acerbic machine gun and the side plot involving Diane’s negotiations — “Trust me, I’m an agent” — for screen rights to a leading playwright’s masterpiece is packed with enough cynicism to be quite disturbing.

There is terrific chemistry and emotional connection between James Millar as Mitchell and Lindsay Farris as Alex, and the latter portrays truly touching sadness and despair as the relationship appears to flounder.

Millar skilfully manages the requisite hollowness of the Hollywood heartthrob, and Alexandra Fowler is brilliant as the world-wise and manipulative Diane, both in dialog and as narrator.

Alexa Ashton conveys well the requisite poise of the worldly, almost aloof Ellen, but also handles the young woman’s fragile side with ease, while delivering some terrific lines with fine timing.

Director Andrew Doyle skilfully oversees a tale of emotional rollercoasters and razor-sharp, barbed satire. Absolutely scintillating theatre.

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