“Crying out for imagination, absurdity or self-awareness: Woof is just a play about two dogs.”
On for a short run at Etcetera Theatre, Woof has a simple premise. ‘Pup’ arrives at her new home and meets her owner’s other dog, ‘Old’, who gives her an induction into doghood. Pup begins by declaring herself a King, delighted that humans will serve her food, shelter, love. She gets given a dog name to great excitement. She then realises she’ll be served the same two meals every day. And you can imagine how it goes because Woof is comically predictable. Everything falls victim to being too literal. The humans communicate in indecipherable barking. The dogs exclaim ‘Oh My Human’.
Playwright Philippine Fauchier-Magnan wants us to reevaluate our relationships with our animals – how we steal them, trap them, leave them lonely and unloved – by giving us their point of view. But here the point of view is seldom different enough. Fauchier-Magnan puts human speeches in dogs, which rather negates the point of them being dogs. The conversations are abstract and full of insight so detached from the moment that they become meaningless. Though moving at points – Pup arrives energetic and has happiness leached out of her; Old, so weathered by his years, lives only to nap – it is hard to empathise with the condition of the animals and the wider humanity it symbolises. We end up circling around the same conversations. We tire of Pup’s long melancholic rumblings about her expected subservience and Old’s endless stream of platitudes.
The actors bring big emotion into these laments. They are clearly accomplished, able to supercharge lines with pain and deliver truly heartfelt monologues. Fauchier-Magnan, playing Pup, stares out at the audience and contorts her face into a myriad of changing emotions. But the sincerity somehow jars with the play: the comprehension of the direness of the dog’s situation is too human. And too often, it stops the play from being funny. The best laugh came when the naive Pup accused Old of being a philistine – though I am unsure whether it was written as a joke.
I don’t have a dog. Perhaps my response would be different if I did. But I struggle to believe that this play will make you look down at the barking thing with ignited interest. Woof doesn’t imagine a world where dogs have wild thoughts and interesting interiority. It imagines a world where all dogs do is think about humans. And in some ways, that is Woof’s biggest failing.
Woof’s run at Etcetera Theatre, London has now concluded.