Written for Time Out
What is it they say about people in glass houses? If you're going to produce a satire portraying the film industry as a superficial shambles of ego and compromise, you better be damn sure that you're safe from the same accusations.
Sadly, Josh Seymour's production for Rock 'n' Roll Theatre looks as if it has been chucked at the Phoenix's makeshift stage without due care or attention. George Moustakas's set of blinds aims to conceal rather than reveal and consequently seems to be apologising for the theatre space. And Four Dogs and a Bone feels like a rehearsed reading. With a faint whiff of vanity, it's played for laughs before anything truthful.
John Patrick Shanley's script, loose ends tangled rather than tied, is no dramaturgical masterclass, but it still deserves far better than this. What's missing here is the bitchy humour of his two squabbling actresses (Amy Tez and Laura Pradelska, tail-wagging and hangdog respectively) fighting over the film.
With Daniel O'Meara's exasperated but ineffectual producer stuck in a rut, trying to keep the peace and the unseen director vilified, only the young writer Victor (a convincing Joe Jameson) emerges with any sympathy in this dog's dinner of a show.
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