"The Dog in the Manger"

“Let’s face it: sometimes love and passion coexist, and their combined energy elevates us to sublime regions where our best selves thrive intertwined by unselfish and unwavering commitment to each other, but, just as often, a tension unexpectedly interposed between love and passion draws us down into a buried cell where a different self throbs in its solitary space, made eager by that opportunity to render us ridiculous, even in our own eyes.

This is life. What dare we do?”

-Elliot Wasserman, Producing Artistic Director, New Harmony Theatre, & USI Chair of Performing Arts

The USI Theatre program staged a production of Lope de Vega’s “Dog in the Manger” or “The Gardener’s Dog” over the weekend, and I had a chance to see this play performed live for the first time. It was performed in English, thankfully, since it’s been about 10 years since my exposure to reading Spanish plays in Spanish. (Although now that I have the basic idea of the story, I’d love to see this performed in Spanish. I’d really like to do this while on vacation in Spain, just throwing that wish out to the universe). The title of the play involves the same story that gives us the phrase “faire le chien du jardinier”, or “to play the gardener’s dog”, meaning a dog who guards his master’s garden without partaking of any of the bounty himself. He won’t enjoy any of the good food, but he won’t allow any other creature to enjoy it either.

I didn’t really know what to expect going in, but this play can be very comically staged, as the USI performance demonstrated. This staging had an excellent actress who was both commanding and entertainingly sarcastic, and the other actors played the comic elements of their characters to the hilt. It was two hours (with two brief intermissions) but it really held my attention all the way to the last moment.

This is the first performance I’ve been able to see at the new Performing Arts Center at USI, and I’m so ready to see more. Next month they’re offering “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”. I haven’t read the book yet, but will try to before the performance.