My Life With The Dogs at BAC

My Life With The Dogs at BAC

21 July, 2008
by: Paddy

Forty year-old four year-old boys. Dogs with the gazes of gulag victims. Drunkards and slaggards, cops and child abusers. Taking a turn down the darker side of life as a Russian child, My Life With The Dogs is anything but your usual Russian dramatic fare.

Combining a good slop of depressing Eastern European clowning with a tight little tale, New International Encounter's My Life With The Dogs is an enlightening piece of theatre. As one sits in the Battersea Arts Centre's tiniest broom cupboard, the bleak existence enjoyed by 99% of Russians is brought to life with more vigour than any blood-letting Channel 4 documentary could ever muster. The clothes are crap to a tee, the swigs of vodka more depressing than a monkey smoking crack and knickers flashed so shiny they could well be the solution to the global electricity crisis.

The performers lead one through a series of interlinked sketches that together form a loose narrative; each 'act' enables the supporting actors to shine. As a structural concept, it works, but there is a nagging sense of post-drama school amateurism, one the heavily seasoned theatre-goer may find had to stomach. But this is the weakest aspect of the play and, refreshingly, the only point that really brings one to question the value of the ticket. (The royal) we suspect that the main body of criticism would be directed against the play's apparent lack of depth. But this is symptomatic of western attitudes to Russian culture. Not everything to come out of the great motherland requires a fifty year body of critical analysis (see every published Russian author to 1993), and this is an example of that (possibly novel) rule.

With the tinkle of a piano providing jaunty musical backbone and guitars bringing the sound into this century, My Life With The Dogs is a classic piece of music hall entertainment. The comedy is brash and twisted enough to lend the show some distance from the Soviet school of humour, and the songs and dances recognisable but reassuringly alien in their performance. The Russian spoken is ropier than a babushka's foot rag, and that should be the last of any audience's concerns, but bizarrely, it is not. The problem with the experience is not the songs, the dogs, the booze or even the despicable uncle Yevgeny, but the modest crowd watching it. This is not a Chekhov, so do not come expecting it to be so. The play is light-hearted, fun and weird enough to scare your date – drain a bottle and enjoy yourself.

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Paddy