|
Douglas
Carter Beane loves the unlovable—or at least
he loves writing about them. Con artists and
movie agents (which is arguably redundant)
fascinate him as they work their chameleon
wiles to suit their mercenary needs. And
when said chameleon is a female, Beane has a
field day parading them across the stage to
exhibit their fits of unabashed fawning and
chronic scheming.
Beane’s latest play, The Little Dog Laughed,
has a Medusa at its center by the name of
Diane, who, against all odds, makes Beane’s
previous femme fatale, Alexa Vere de Vere
from his 1997 play, As Bees in Honey Drown,
seem very nearly an amateur grifter.
Nonetheless, the two women could be
related—or perhaps separated at birth. A
conniving movie agent, Diane is
unforthcoming about her past—with only one
brief anecdote to explain her motivations
(it concerns sexism at the hands of a
powerful producer). What matters far more to
Diane than from whence she has come is her
overwhelming need for fame and its attendant
power.
In The Little Dog Laughed, Diane has the job
of keeping her client, Mitchell, in the
closet—given that any public acknowledgement
of his homosexuality would be, according to
her, instant career death. And though she
alludes to being lesbian herself, Diane
seems far less interested in nestling with
another person than with an Oscar for Best
Film. When Mitchell finds himself
increasingly involved with a New York
hustler, Diane goes apoplectic. Not to
worry, however, for Beane has taken the
pulse of the American populace and realizes
that what matters most in this society is a
cover on a glossy magazine—and at curtain’s
end, Diane has her requisite happy ending.
As for the audience, we’re left with a sour
taste—and the question as to why we’ve spent
the past two hours with such a heartless
bunch of hypocrites. The characters stalking
the stage in Beane’s latest are no more
substantive than the public personae
littering the pages of far too many glossy
magazines. If we needed further evidence of
Hollywood’s ruthless public relations
machinations, a copy of Vanity Fair would
have sufficed—and we needn’t have dressed
for the theatre.
|
