See This: God's Ear from Dog & Pony Theatre Company

By Julienne Bilker in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 14, 2009 3:40PM

Leaving the Viaduct Theatre following Dog & Pony Theatre Company’s production of God’s Ear, we were in a bit of a daze. We knew we’d seen something good, but couldn’t decide how to explain it to you. This 90 minute one-act, centered around a couple who has lost their young son in an accident, is more like an epic poem disguised as a play with odd musical numbers, but is much better than that sounds. We decided to see what Chris Jones, critic for the Trib, had to say about it. At the very least, we were sure his opinion, to which our reaction generally ranges from slight to complete disagreement, would provide a good jumping-off point for argument. Wrong.

We agree with everything he says. It isn’t the first time this has happened (his and our reviews of Eclipse’s Blue Surge were equally complementary), but the occurrence is rare. Jones hits the nail on the head in describing what this show is not - a drama that sets “loss under a movie-of-the-week kind of glare.” Instead, the “intensely poetic” language “ennobles the simple human condition of parenting,” and the actors “mirror what you think you’d do yourself in similarly terrible circumstances” with seemingly effortless honesty.

Jones also articulated for us the reason why we had trouble describing the show in the first place: it left us feeling uncomfortable, but in a good way. “As [playwright Jenny] Schwartz and this intensely moving and haunting little production understand, life, love and loss can’t always be solved by simplistic optimism.”

God’s Ear is at the Viaduct Theatre (3111 N. Western) thru April 26. Tickets $20 ($15 for students/seniors), all Thursday/Sunday performances are pay-what-you-can. 773-296-6024