It is said that you never act with animals and maybe children but this show has to be an exception. Written by Ron Elisha, a prolific Australian playwright, Everyman and His Dog has credentialed actor Dennis Coard sharing the stage with Dog, a well trained 12yo golden retriever known off stage as Zita, who sat and lay patiently on stage throughout the whole monologue.
As part of the Victorian Seniors Festival and the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Theatre Works in collaboration with Denny Lawrence as Director/Producer, presented this short season at the upstairs Explosive Factory in St Kilda.
The work is loosely based on Elisha’s unhappy personal experiences with canines in the past as he brings his main character Dr John Everyman, a retired GP living a quiet and orderly life in his empty house, who is suddenly faced and landed with Dog, an unexpected gift from his daughter.
Having lost his beloved wife Sofia, he is totally unprepared for such companionship and being able to cope with the intrusion of a canine, taking him well outside of his comfort zone. He relates to us his childhood experience, of a feisty neighbouring Boxer who often bailed him up and drew blood from his ankle. Then there was the forced cleaning of his father’s boots, having stepped into street dog droppings.
The demands of caring and owning Dog were well canvassed as was Everyman’s character as he struggles through the highs and lows of life. Much is all a matter of fact, anger, humour and pathos and gripping the need to walk, feed and care for something or rather someone else, not a human but a canine that he freely admits never having a liking for dogs.
Well staged, acted and directed this thought provoking work will have you looking your canine directly into their eyes as their tails wag – and you thinking, how can I manage without you?

• Review by
  Graeme McCoubrie