The directors of ‘Dogtooth’ transferred a film onto the stage, which is an awkward move and a difficult challenge. The camera has a different intensity, intimacy and a different sense of time.
There were, then, a series of blackouts between sometimes very short sequences, breaking the flow for the audience. A feature of the film somewhat lost in translation, however, was a lightness of touch and a sense of humour. These are precisely the aspects least amenable to a teenage treatment, and so this version lacked a certain subtlety. The pretext is an absurdist metaphor, although the cast brought out the feature that it is also chillingly believable.
Melisa was particularly convincing in the complexity of her conflicted mother figure. And the directors had taken care with her to pace moments of panic when a child asks the wrong question! As the three siblings, Sanni, Juliet and Paul were unnervingly secure in their confusions and their masochistic and sexually manipulative relations graphically depicted. The play really revolves around the distortion of their innocence under the pressure of an authoritarian nightmare of a father-figure. Modeled, perhaps, on a middle-American fundamentalist Christian father, this disturbing character is attempting to fulfill every bourgeois aspiration by conniving with his weak wife to brainwash their children and restrain them within the four walls of their suburban bubble. To this end, having Yaniv sitting, expressionless in the car outside the venue as the audience entered was a master stroke of weirdery and added menace to his subsequent entrance with the unhappy prostitute (Cecilia) who would ‘service’ his remorseless son (Paul).
The choice of venue meant that audience seats were limited and at a premium, which is no bad thing (although tough for those who missed it), and it was interesting to have the audience cast as a massed fly-on-the-wall in a family living room, with kitchen and bedroom adjoining. The cramped setting worked very well to heighten the desperate sense of incarceration and the sensitive scene dressing emphasized this cage’s relentless, sanitized mediocrity.
The actors unflinchingly entered this world without deviation, which was impressive and left the audience uncomfortable at being invited into their bizarre confidences. Sanni who, as the daughter, is sacrificed in sexual slavery to her brother, who finally revolts and, tearing out her canine, escapes, had the task of summing up the disturbing kaleidoscope of their confusions in a pathetic, desperate dance of futile abandon – the climax of the piece. She had clearly done some hard work to achieve this characterization.
While the tension lasted, Dogtooth was a convincing stab at an ambitious task, then the family recoiled…a chorus of snarling, snapping, howling… literally, barking!
Melisa was particularly convincing in the complexity of her conflicted mother figure. And the directors had taken care with her to pace moments of panic when a child asks the wrong question! As the three siblings, Sanni, Juliet and Paul were unnervingly secure in their confusions and their masochistic and sexually manipulative relations graphically depicted. The play really revolves around the distortion of their innocence under the pressure of an authoritarian nightmare of a father-figure. Modeled, perhaps, on a middle-American fundamentalist Christian father, this disturbing character is attempting to fulfill every bourgeois aspiration by conniving with his weak wife to brainwash their children and restrain them within the four walls of their suburban bubble. To this end, having Yaniv sitting, expressionless in the car outside the venue as the audience entered was a master stroke of weirdery and added menace to his subsequent entrance with the unhappy prostitute (Cecilia) who would ‘service’ his remorseless son (Paul).
The choice of venue meant that audience seats were limited and at a premium, which is no bad thing (although tough for those who missed it), and it was interesting to have the audience cast as a massed fly-on-the-wall in a family living room, with kitchen and bedroom adjoining. The cramped setting worked very well to heighten the desperate sense of incarceration and the sensitive scene dressing emphasized this cage’s relentless, sanitized mediocrity.
The actors unflinchingly entered this world without deviation, which was impressive and left the audience uncomfortable at being invited into their bizarre confidences. Sanni who, as the daughter, is sacrificed in sexual slavery to her brother, who finally revolts and, tearing out her canine, escapes, had the task of summing up the disturbing kaleidoscope of their confusions in a pathetic, desperate dance of futile abandon – the climax of the piece. She had clearly done some hard work to achieve this characterization.
While the tension lasted, Dogtooth was a convincing stab at an ambitious task, then the family recoiled…a chorus of snarling, snapping, howling… literally, barking!
Benedict Clark
Head of Aesthetics
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