The Mystery of Edwin Drood

One of the most well-known and intriguing factors of The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the fact that the audience gets to choose the identity of the killer. But it's not the only thing you should know if you're contemplating going. It's also a melodrama, something I hadn't known to expect, and a musical, which I did know about beforehand. So expect musical numbers, corny jokes, meta humor and a lot more audience-actor interaction than is required simply to get your votes for the ending.

The Boise Little Theater production's greatest flaw is that many times the actors and singers simply couldn't be heard over the recorded accompaniment. One of the most glaring examples is the duet at the beginning of Act II by Kristina Woodard, who played Edwin Drood and Dick Datchery, and Lauren Haber-Mannella, who played Princess Puffer. I could make out maybe three phrases in the entire song. These two can obviously project just fine -- I could hear them both quite distinctly in earlier and later numbers with softer accompanying music. But the music levels needed to be fixed. The song at the beginning of Act II was hardly the only instance of this, and it sometimes made me wonder if I was losing some meaning or missing some plot points.

The rest of the musical was a little hit and miss, which I find is often the case with melodrama -- but everything's supposed to be played over the top, so how do you judge it? And with musicals, it's hard enough to find a triple threat (acting, singing and dancing) without throwing British accents into the mix. Kudos to the actors for giving it their best efforts to do all four, but you could see where each person excelled and was maybe a little bit weak. Ana Boyd, who played Rosa Bud, had a gorgeous singing voice and excellent facial expressions, but didn't seem to have as much fun with her character as some of the other actors. John Myers had a very entertaining persona for his characters and great delivery on the super-fast song "Both Sides of the Coin," but he did let his accent slip. Mike Givens had a pretty good accent and a delightfully over-the-top character, and sang well enough -- but not to the point I think women would suddenly start flocking to him, as happens in his solo, "Never the Luck." I could go down the line like this, but I'd rather not. The actors all did a fine job -- they just all had their particular strengths and weaknesses, as you might expect in a musical. But Drood is one of those plays where the cast is so large it seems better to take it as a whole. Overall, it was a nice ensemble. The actors support each other well, and the sum is greater than the parts. (You think that's faint praise, because it's always the case? Think again. Compare Drood to God's Ear, one of the shows I reviewed last week. I actually think the sum was less than the parts in that show; they had so much to work with, and it was squandered.)

The set and the special effects were fantastic. John Jasper's (Cary White's) dream sequence was marvelously surreal, and the train at the beginning of Act II is just awesome.

I hope BLT can set the music levels a little better for its final weekend of Drood. As for my recommendation, I would say if you like melodrama, definitely see this one (and maybe try to pick a different murderer than Rosa Bud and write a comment about the ending you saw -- we'll compare notes!). If you're not really into melodrama, you might consider skipping it, but you may still want to go just for the sheer novelty of choosing your own ending.

Roundup

October

• Oct. 25: Boise Contemporary Theater presents God's Ear at the theater at 854 Fulton St. in Boise. A couple struggles to find themselves and each other in the wake of a family tragedy in this show that includes appearances from the Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe and a transvestite flight attendant. Show times are 2:00 and 8:00.
• Oct. 25: Stage Coach Theatre presents Dark Rituals, a thriller about an anthropologist learning about the Native American legend of the windigo, a cannibalistic creature. She and her son and daughter-in-law find themselves forced to face supernatural elements, murder and ritual death. The show is 8:15 at the Hillcrest Shopping Center at Orchard and Overland in Boise.
• Oct. 25-26: Company of Fools presents Jack and the Beanstalk, the musical, at the Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. Performances are Oct. 25 at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., and Oct. 26 at 3:00 p.m.
• Oct. 29: Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah performs Time Capsule: A Century of Dance at 7:30 at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Oct. 31: Music Theatre of Idaho opens Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a musical thriller by Stephen Sondheim about a murderous, vengeful barber and some suspicious meat pies. Shows are Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8 at 7:30 and Nov. 1 at 1:30 at the Nampa Civic Center.
• Now through Nov. 1: Boise Little Theater presents The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style musical mystery by Rupert Holmes based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. During intermission, the audience gets to vote on who the murderer is. Show dates are Oct. 25-26 and 29-31 and Nov. 1; show times are 8:00 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2:00 on Sunday and 7:30 on Wednesday. The theater is on Fort Street just off Broadway in Boise.
• Now through Nov. 1: Prairie Dog Productions presents Indiana Stones and the Quest for the Holy Oil at the theater at 3820 Cassia St. in Boise. The show runs at 7:15 on Oct. 25 and 31 and Nov. 1.
• Now through Nov. 8: Knock 'Em Dead Dinner Theatre presents Ragtime, a musical combining Jewish folk music sounds, vaudeville and jazz to tell the story of a Latvian Jewish immigrant, an upscale white family, a Harlem musician, and historical figures such as Houdini, Booker T. Washington and Henry Ford. Show dates are Oct. 25 and 30-31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8. Show times are 7:00 Thursdays and 8:00 Fridays and Saturdays; dinner is served at 7:00 Fridays and Saturdays. The theater is on Ninth Street between Front and Myrtle in Boise.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.
• Now through Nov. 9: The Boise Art Museum presents Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.
• Now through Nov. 15: Starlight Mountain Theatre presents Wonderful Town, a comedy about two sisters -- an actor and a playwright -- who move to New York City to make it big. The show runs Oct. 25 and 31 and Nov. 1, 7-8 and 14-15 at 7:30 at The Star theater at 1851 Century Way in Boise.

November

• November: The Boise Art Museum opens a new exhibit, a site-specific architectural structure called After, by Lead Pencil Studio architects and artists Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo.
• Nov. 1: Opera Idaho presents Lucia di Lammermoor, an opera about a woman who goes mad when her brother forces her to marry a man she does not love, at 8:00 in the Morrison Center at BSU.
• Nov. 6: The College of Idaho Theater Department opens Lapis Blue, Blood Red, the story of Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi and her struggles after she is raped and one of her paintings is stolen. The show runs Nov. 6-8 and 12-15 at 7:30 and Nov. 16 at 2:00 at the Langroise Studio Theater at C of I in Caldwell.
• Nov. 6-9: Idaho Dance Theater presents Risky Business, its fall dance recital, at 8:00 Nov. 6-8 and 2:00 Nov. 9 at the BSU Special Events Center.
• Nov. 7-8: The Langroise Trio performs at Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy in Boise at 7:30 on Nov. 7 and at Langroise Recital Hall at the College of Idaho at 7:30 on Nov. 8.
• Nov. 12: Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Botany of Desire and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, reads selected works at 7:30 at the Egyptian Theatre at Main and Capitol in Boise.
• Nov. 13: The Boise State Theatre Arts Department opens A Dream Play by August Stringberg, about the daughter of the god Indra who comes to Earth and experiences human suffering. The show runs Nov. 13-15 and 19-22 at 7:30 and Nov. 16 and 23 at 2:00 at the Danny Peterson Theater in the Morrison Center.
• Nov. 14-15: The Boise Philharmonic performs Vessels of Courage and Hope by contemporary Israeli composer Shulamit Ran and Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Major by Gustav Mahler at 8:00 Nov. 14 at NNU's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa and 8:15 Nov. 15 at BSU's Morrison Center in Boise.
• Nov. 14: CAN-ACT opens We Found Love and an Exquisite Set of Porcelain Figures Aboard the SS Farndale Avenue, a comedy about an inept theater troupe trying to perform a romantic epic. The show runs at Nov. 14-15 and 20-22 and 8:00 and Nov. 15 at 2:00 at 214 7th Ave., Caldwell.
• Nov. 17: Caldwell Fine Arts presents Idaho Showcase, a concert with Sandpoint flautist Rhonda Bradetich, Coeur d'Alene harpist Leslie Stratton Norris and the College of Idaho Sinfonia, at 7:30 at Jewett Auditorium on the C of I campus.
• Nov. 19: Boise Contemporary Theater presents No ... You Shutup, a one-woman show by comedian Lauren Weedman premiering at BCT.
• Nov. 21: Alley Repertory Theater opens Reckless, a Christmas comedy. The show runs Nov. 21-23, 26, and 28-29 at 8:00 at the Visual Arts Collective behind the Woman of Steel Gallery on Chinden.
• Nov. 23: The Treasure Valley Youth Symphony performs their fall concert at 7:00 at Timberline High School.
• Nov. 28: Boise Little Theater presents The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge, in which, one year after finding the true meaning of Christmas, Scrooge is back to his old ways and has decided to sue Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The show runs Nov. 28-29 and Dec. 4-7 and 10-13 at 2:00 Sunday, 7:30 Wednesday and 8:00 Thursday through Saturday at the theater on Fort Street.
• Nov. 28: Stage Coach Theatre presents Moving, a comic slice-of-life tale of a family dealing with one of the most stressful days any family undergoes: moving day. The show runs Nov. 28-29 and Dec. 4-7 and 11-13 at 7:30 Thursday, 8:15 Friday through Saturday, and 2:00 Sunday.
• Nov. 28: Starlight Mountain Theatre opens The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, a comedy about a married couple who are trying to put on the annual church Christmas pageant even though the cast includes a family of mean and nasty kids. The show runs Nov. 28-29 and Dec. 5-6, 12-13 and 19-20 at 7:30 at The Star theater at 1851 Century Way in Boise.
• Nov. 28: Encore Theatre Company opens A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas, a drama inspired by the Little House on the Prairie books. The show runs Nov. 28-29 and Dec. 5-6 at 7:00 at NNU's Science Lecture Hall in Nampa and Dec. 12 at 7:00 at the Caldwell Center for the Arts at 603 Everett St., Caldwell.
• Nov. 29: The Boise Art Musuem opens an exhibit of ceramic sculptures, drawings and paintings by Japanese artist Jun Kaneko. Some of Kaneko's ceramic pieces are up to 13 feet high and 5,000 pounds.

Dark Rituals

I got two broad impressions from seeing Dark Rituals at Stagecoach Theatre. One was that the show's many plot twists keep it pretty entertaining and are pulled off fairly well; the other is that there isn't a single sympathetic character in the play. I'm going to focus on the characters, since to talk about the plot twists would be to ruin them, but that's not to say that the show isn't worth going to just to see what happens.

There's really no one to root for in this play. In fact, the one neutral character is Vernon (Anthony Polidori), the Native American helping the main character with her book; everyone else is profoundly negative. The ostensible protagonist is Anne McCauley (played by Regina Yegge). She expects her son (Ian Taylor) to do her plumbing, all the while lecturing him and whining that he doesn't love her. She badmouths his job and his wife (played by Karen Holcomb with just enough bitchiness to make you dislike her a bit, but not enough to justify Anne's rude remarks) to his face. And as an anthropologist, she's intellectually dishonest, writing sensationalized pop anthropology books that bastardize Native American and African rituals and take liberties with the truth. She doesn't really care about the cultures she's exploring, just about churning out another bestseller for her Dark Rituals series: Dark Rituals of the Headhunters of the Amazon, Dark Rituals of Voodoo, Dark Rituals of the North American Gangster, and now Dark Rituals of the North American Indians. Were Yegge a little more comfortable with her role, she could easily have become the person I most loved to hate in this play.

As it is, that dubious honor might go either to Ian Taylor, who played Anne's son Harrison McCauley, who we soon learn is plotting his mother's death, or to Perry Decker as Dr. David Murray, who has his own insidious side. (Although, since I'm not rooting for Anne, I'm actually not sure I can really hate Harrison for plotting her demise. Maybe I am sort of rooting for him in the way you might root for Wile E. Coyote to catch the Roadrunner. What? Don't tell me I'm the only one who did that.) Most likely it would go to Taylor, who comes across as tensely threatening at times, mocking his mother in a twisted, almost Joker-esque way. It was a nice turnaround from a family dynamic that reminded me of nothing so much as the horrible comic strip "Momma."

God's Ear

By now, regular readers will probably note by my overuse of words like "whimsical" and my tendency to be drawn to plays with names like "Psycho Beach Party" that I like offbeat productions. So I thought I was all set with God's Ear at Boise Contemporary Theater.

"Jenny Schwartz has launched her career with a breathtaking new play about loss, love and language," BCT's description reads. "At the center of the story is a couple, struggling to find themselves and each other after a sudden family tragedy.... In contrast to its heavy subject matter, God's Ear features a playful cast of characters, including the Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe and a transvestite flight attendant."

"The Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe and a transvestite flight attendant?" I thought. "How can you go wrong?"

Let me assure you, it's very, very possible.

The play was simply weird. I gave up trying to get it and decided there really wasn't that much to get. I was absolutely baffled by the people around me in the audience after the show who were gushing about how great it was. To me, the whole thing smacked of pretension.

Some leeway may be called for because this is a play about grief, and of course different people experience pain and grief differently. And grief isn't always about crying or tragedy. But the play seemed insular somehow -- like it wasn't letting us in, like it wasn't trying to let us understand.

It certainly wasn't the fault of the actors. Tracy Sunderland and Matthew Cameron Clark, who play Mel and Ted, a married couple who have lost a son, are clearly superb, despite the fact that I didn't like the material they had to work with or how they were delivering it (clearly choices of the author and the director). And Andrea Caban brought some much-needed humor to the play with her portrayal of Lenora, the woman Mel refers to as a call girl.

The dialogue relied on the repetition and variation of key phrases. The same question might get asked four or five times, one right after another. The character who answers might give a different answer each time, or might give a synonym of their previous answer. Occasionally this leads to some genuine laugh lines, and there are some witty one-liners. But overall it's a structure that may have been interesting to play with as a writer, but did little for me as an audience member. The dialogue was also delivered in a very stilted, unnatural, often rushed manner. It seems at times like the emphasis is on all the wrong words. Real people don't talk like that.

One of the things I did like were the songs in the play -- a capella little tunes out of the middle of nowhere. One of my favorites was sung by Beau Baxter (who played Guy), a list of things you cannot sell on eBay (a list including "human organs" and "stolen stuff.") They added a little levity to a play that felt, so much of the time, completely numb.

Open Studios Weekend

A couple weeks ago I decided to visit a few local artists in their studios for BOSCO, the Boise Open Studios Collective Organization. I went to the opening reception that Thursday in the Idaho State Historical Museum, where they had a sample of each artists' work so you could get an idea of what you might see if you went to their studio. I sketched a few of the pieces there and picked out a few places to go to on Saturday, where I did a few more sketches. I think for the most part I'll just post my drawings here and avoid too much comment:

"Winds of Warm Latitudes," one of a series of lithograph-type pictures by Sandy Marostica, many of which used old astrological symbols and the like.

This is one of the thousands of paintings in Tarmo Watia's house. Marostica recommended we go to his house, and I'm really glad we followed her recommendation. I'd recommend anyone go see his work during BOSCO next year. His house is filled to the brim with art.

Edit: Since this was first posted, I accidentally deleted a couple of the files from this when I was cleaning up my folders on Google+, so sketches I originally had here of a sculpture by Zella Bardsley and a shadow box by Marostica are gone. They weren't my best work, anyhow.

Paste Eater and Erin Ruiz at Visual Arts Collective

The artist behind the red cat balloon I've done my best to capture here goes by the name "Paste Eater." I kid you not. This fantastical piece was one of his two most prominent paintings at the Visual Arts Collective (I assume it's a he -- not that the act of paste-eating is gender-specific). The other, a huge square painting with two separate skinny panels at the sides continuing the picture, depicted a huge black mass of warped houses with fiery windows and doors, and little white cartoony ghost houses rising from the hellish mass -- some with halos and wings, and others reminiscent of Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. You can see a small snippet of the painting on the right here. My boyfriend thought it was the perfect depiction of the housing crisis. I'm inclined to agree.

The other artist at VAC is Erin Ruiz, whose cartoons are primarily waist- or neck-down views of scrawny-legged people hovering in the air, or being flown by birds or an umbrella. Like Paste Eater's art, it's delightfully whimsical. The gaunt flying figures are a perfect counterpoint to some of her other works on display -- roly-poly nudes of enormous girth. One picture of a rotund naked woman had a small clam shell at the bottom of the page, in what may have been a parody of Botticelli.

Roundup

October

• Oct. 10-11: CAN-ACT presents Something's Afoot, a musical murder-mystery spoof about 10 people stranded at an isolated English country estate and who are killed off one by one in mysterious and amusing ways, at its new location at 214 Seventh Ave., Caldwell. Show times are 8:00; tickets for the show include a wine, cheese and chocolate tasting.
• Oct. 10-12: Boise State Department of Theatre Arts presents Tragedy: A Tragedy, an absurdist comedy about a TV news team prepared to cover a tragedy that isn't happening. Performances are Oct. 10-11 at 7:30 and Oct. 12 at 2:00 in the Morrison Center Stage II, newly rechristened the Danny Peterson Theatre. (I'm planning to see this show tonight and I'll post my review tomorrow if you're curious about seeing it Saturday or Sunday.Or not. We ran into some bad traffic and showed up too late to see the show. I don't know if we'll see it tomorrow or not.)
• Oct. 10-12: "Waiting for the World to Change," Candace Nicol's exhibit of etchings, collapraphs and screenprints about growing up in a multicultural family and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 is on display at the Hatch Ballroom at BSU's Student Union Building.
• Oct. 10: Stage Coach Theatre opens Dark Rituals, a thriller about an anthropologist learning about the Native American legend of the windigo, a cannibalistic creature. She and her son and daughter-in-law find themselves forced to face supernatural elements, murder and ritual death. Show dates are Oct. 10-11, 16-19 and 23-25; show times are 7:30 Thursdays, 8:15 Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:00 Sunday. The theater is in the Hillcrest Shopping Center at Orchard and Overland in Boise.
• Oct. 10: Alley Repertory Theater opens Burial at Thebes, a contemporary version of Antigone written by Seamus Haney as a metaphor for security issues under the Bush administration. Performances are Oct. 10-11, 14, and 16-18 at 8:00 at the Visual Arts Collective on Osage St. behind the Woman of Steel Gallery on Chinden.
• Oct. 14: Big Band Swing Design of the Netherlands performs at 7:30 p.m. at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Now through Oct. 17: Robert Kantor's "The Hope Series," an exhibit of large-scale steel and mixed-media sculptures, is on display in the Visual Arts Center of the liberal arts building in Gallery 1 at BSU.
• Oct. 17-18: The Boise Philharmonic will perform three pieces by Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Piano Concerto No. 3 and Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony, at NNU's Swayne Auditorium in Nampa on Oct. 17 at 8:00 and at BSU's Morrison Center in Boise on Oct. 18 at 8:15.
• Oct. 17: Boise Little Theater opens The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style musical mystery by Rupert Holmes based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. During intermission, the audience gets to vote on who the murderer is. Show dates are Oct. 17-18, 23-26 and 29-31 and Nov. 1; show times are 8:00 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2:00 on Sunday and 7:30 on Wednesday. The theater is on Fort Street just off Broadway in Boise.
• Now through Oct. 25: Boise Contemporary Theater presents God's Ear at the theater at 854 Fulton St. in Boise. A couple struggles to find themselves and each other in the wake of a family tragedy in this show that includes appearances from the Tooth Fairy, G.I. Joe and a transvestite flight attendant. Show dates are Oct. 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25 at 8:00 and 18 and 25 at 2:00.
• Now through Oct. 26: Company of Fools presents Jack and the Beanstalk, the musical, at the Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. Performances are Oct. 8-11, 15-18 and 22-25 at 7 p.m., Oct. 12, 19 and 26 at 3:00 p.m. and Oct. 18 and 25 at 11 a.m.
• Oct. 29: Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah performs Time Capsule: A Century of Dance at 7:30 at Jewett Auditorium at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
• Oct. 31: Music Theatre of Idaho opens Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a musical thriller by Stephen Sondheim about a murderous, vengeful barber and some suspicious meat pies. Shows are Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8 at 7:30 and Nov. 1 at 1:30 at the Nampa Civic Center.
• Now through Nov. 1: Prairie Dog Productions presents Indiana Stones and the Quest for the Holy Oil at the theater at 3820 Cassia St. in Boise. The show runs 2:00 Oct. 12 and 19 and at 7:15 on Oct. 10-11, 17-18, 24-25 and 31; and Nov. 1.
• Now through Nov. 8: Knock 'Em Dead Dinner Theatre presents Ragtime, a musical combining Jewish folk music sounds, vaudeville and jazz to tell the story of a Latvian Jewish immigrant, an upscale white family, a Harlem musician, and historical figures such as Houdini, Booker T. Washington and Henry Ford. Show dates are Oct. 10-11, 16-18, 23-25 and 30-31 and Nov. 1 and 6-8. Show times are 7:00 Thursdays and 8:00 Fridays and Saturdays; dinner is served at 7:00 Fridays and Saturdays. The theater is on Ninth Street between Front and Myrtle in Boise.
• Now through Nov. 9: Boise Art Museum hosts an exhibit by photographer and sculptor Catherine Chalmers called American Cockroach.
• Now through Nov. 9: The Boise Art Museum presents Upstream Fly Fishing in the American West, an exhibit of photographs by Charles Lindsay.
  

Boise Arts word art

I made some Boise Arts Wordles at wordle.net:

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead

It's a pretty dark version of the Peanuts gang.

Snoopy mauled Woodstock and had to be put down. Lucy was put in a mental institution for lighting the Little Red-Haired Girl's hair on fire. Linus smokes pot. Pigpen is a bully. Sally's a Wiccan, or at least she is this week. Peppermint Patty and Marcie pour booze into their milk cartons so they won't get caught drinking during school.

And what about the round-headed kid? Charlie Brown is just as messed up as the rest of them. He's somehow, despite his premature balding, managed to work his way into the popular crowd. He seems to have gone through life in a haze, accepting the high-school atrocities around him, standing idly by as kids are beaten and victimized. It's the death of Snoopy and a sudden connection with Schroeder, who was outed and has been hated by everyone in the school since then, that finally wakes him up and leads him to question the hate and chaos around him.

John Gibbons does a good job navigating his way through CB's awakening. You can tell he's struggling a bit, not entirely sure how to break from his old circle of mean, popular friends, or even if he wants to. The best part of his performance, however, is at the end, when he turns angrily on his former friends and even on his memories of Schroeder, and later yet when he finds some comfort in the words of his faraway pen pal.

(A brief word about the names, like CB, before I go on -- all the characters' names are different than in the Peanuts comic strip, whether a slight change from Marcie to Marcy or a large one from Pigpen to Matt, a misogynist, homophobe and bully who eschews his former nickname. Wikipedia suggests that this could be either to avoid copyright infringement or for artistic effect. I very much doubt it's the former, since legal protections for works of satire would apply. Generally the references to Peanuts are obvious, but oblique. But it is entertaining to see the occasional direct reference -- for instance, when Marcy accidentally calls Tricia, "sir," and Tricia responds, "You've got to stop calling me that.")

Lee Vander Boegh, who plays Van, the play's version of Linus, has the stoner philosophy dialogue delivery down, trotting out such timeworn high-as-a-kite classics as "nothing is something" and transitioning randomly into the topic of neutrons.

Brandon Bilbao does a wonderful job as Matt. He's very believable as a popular bully, particularly when he's forced to confront CB's relationship with Beethoven (Schroeder). Bilbao allows you to almost understand where Matt's coming from, but makes you hate him nonetheless.

Geneva Stevahn and Carissa Linder are simply excellent as Tricia and Marcy, who have an insult for every occasion (usually something along the lines of, "Survey says: You're fat!"). But their meanness masks other things that are going on -- Marcy is downright desperate in her quest for popularity and a prom date, and Tricia's clearly trying to hide her attraction to Frieda by calling her names.

Andrea Haskett as Sally wasn't the strongest character, but provided some great laughs during her first angsty teenage poetry dramatic reading. Her recital is in earnest (as it should be), making the performance somewhat reminiscent of the Star Wars kid.

Rob Tromp does a fine job as Beethoven, who's become an angry loner and is neither ready to completely come to terms with being gay nor to overlook his treatment at the hands of his peers.

Aimee Nell Smith, who plays Lucy, is definitely a highlight of the show. She's in just one scene, when CB comes to visit her in the psychiatric ward. Smith does a wonderful job, alternately emotional, warm, and sarcastic. She's yanking CB's chain half the time, yet the other half she's the closest thing he has to a psychiatrist.

A few of the actors seem pretty old to be playing high school kids, but it's forgivable.

Dog Sees God is worth going to if you're in the mood for a good dark comedy. But don't be surprised if you're crying a little at the end.