Closing its summer season, the Celebration Company at the Station Theatre has chosen to present for an abbreviated run Douglas Carter Beane's strange latter-day comedy of manners, The Little Dog Laughed. With a crispness of dialogue that reminds one of Noel Coward, the play opens to quick, snappy vignetted scenes, with quick intercutting from stage left to stage right to center stage suggesting the intercutting of scenes in a movie script -- which seems very appropriate, as it is the hypocrisy of Hollywood that supplies the play with its major themes.

Well acted by a cast of two men and two women, the first act flies by. Much of the heavy lifting is done by Diane, (Chris Tabor) the lesbian agent of the closeted gay matinee-idol, wannabe, Mitchell (Casey Long). It seems that Beane wishes the audience to consider Diane the hardest character in the play, but yet wants to instill in them some real sympathy. Oddly enough, these contrasting qualities, paradoxically, make her the most forthright, reliable, and (when you would expect her to be anything but) the most loveable character in the play. Miss Tabor, a new-comer to the Station Theatre's stage, does a truly fantastic job of balancing this lovability with her character's textured craftiness, a balancing act which, if it fails, could topple the entire play. Fortunately enough, thanks to Miss Tabor's acting skill (including some truly knife-edge body language and facial expressions), Beane's world in which public lies become the currency of the industry to the point of becoming its lifeblood does not topple down, the balancing act holds, and the character of Diane may well become the play's salvation.

The other characters of Mitchell, the closeted homosexual movie actor (Casey Long), Alex, the bisexual male prostitute (Rob Zaleski) and Ellen, Alex's party-girl sometimes lover (Katie Baldwin) are all well done, and director Mathew Green's interpretation of the script is, as is usual in a Green-directed show, right on the mark. Yet I truly had difficulty establishing an empathy with these characters. My lack of empathy has nothing to do with the acting or directing, both of which, as stated, were certainly up to the high standards one expects to find from the Celebration Company at the Station Theatre. My problem was with the characters, themselves. I have found certain plays in which I have this problem, a lack of empathy with the characters. Among these are Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect, and Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. I have less trouble with The Little Dog Laughed, possibly because I can appreciate Beane's attempt to mine all the world's demonic truthfulness, but probably because I can really empathize with the character of Diane, although she is as far as any of the other characters from being a saint.

The play's second act shifts gears and does not have the laughs as does the first, yet Beane's zinging one-liners are still there and there is some laugh-getting situational comedy. But at the end, I feel that the characters all got what they deserved, and had little sympathy for any of them, with the exception of Diane. This has nothing to do with the characters sexual orientation. It has everything to do with their lack of honesty to each other and to the public at large. I left the theatre feeling a bit sorry for Alex, even though he brought his fate on himself, and having nothing but disgust for Ellen and Mitchell as they go forward to live a complete lie, not to cover what they are, but to strive for their material desires in life (described when answering Diane's probing question, “What will make you happy?”). Diane stands alone, in the eyes of this reviewer, thanks to her unabashed amorality when it comes to handling situations. At least she is truthful in dealing with her untruthfulness.

The Little Dog Laughed will continue to play at The Station Theatre, 223 North Broadway in Urbana, Illinois tonight (7-30-10), through Sunday, August first at 8:00 p.m. The theatre is dark on Mondays and Tuesdays. As has been the case with all of its summer productions this season, The Little Dog Laughed played to a sold out house on opening night, and is likely to sell out quickly. For ticket reservations, call (217) 384-4000.