Pet sounds: Belvoir’s The Dog / The Cat

The old adage goes that you should never work with animals, children, or firearms. But in Belvoir’s latest production – a double bill of one-act romantic comedies – the animals take to the stage with gusto, and the result is a charming, effervescent, and hilarious take on pet-ownership (or co-ownership, as the case may be). The Dog / The Cat are two new plays by Brendan Cowell and Lally Katz respectively. Staged in Belvoir’s Downstairs theatre, there is a humble honesty in these two short pieces – both no more than forty-five minutes – and it is quite possibly one of the most entertaining and genuinely funny evenings I’ve had at Belvoir in recent months.

It's about love: STCSA's The Seagull

It was about ideas. Big ideas.
What every play should be about.

 – Dorn

In a letter to a friend in 1895, Chekhov famously described the play he was working on as “a comedy – three f., six m., four acts, a landscape (a view of a lake), much conversation about literature, little action, and five tons of love.” While it is a rather simplistic reduction of the play, it is nonetheless quite a succinct summary. If you were to examine the play, peel back its layers and try to get inside each of Chekhov’s characters, you’d find that ultimately it’s a play about love in all its different guises; at the same time, however, in true Chekhovian fashion, it’s not particularly ‘about’ any one thing, except perhaps Life.

The play was, of course, The Seagull, and like the best works of literature, it transcends the centuries and is still as fresh and bold and groundbreaking as the day it was first performed. And, like the classics, every so often a production comes along that cuts to the very heart of what it is about that you cannot help but be struck by its beauty, elegance and rawness. For me, that production was the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s The Seagull, presented as part of the Adelaide Festival.