Playreaders sniff out Dog Logic
By Mike Gottlieb

Theater
Dog Logic
Weds–Thurs, Oct 31–Nov 1, 7:30pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
10-peso donation

A man named Hertel with a mysterious hole in his head owns a dilapidated pet cemetery that stands in the way of progress. He is urged to sell for millions, but hates the idea of those beloved animals paved over with a gigantic parking lot or tract housing.

Hertel says, “You know what the Egyptian gods used to ask people after they died, but before they’d take them across the river into the land of the dead? Know what they’d ask ‘em? ‘Were you kind to animals?’” 

Playreaders presents Dog Logic by Tom Strelech, an off-beat, bittersweet comedy about what it means to be human in a dog-eat-dog world.

An intoxicating mix of the sublime and surreal, this dark comedy is a hilarious but disturbing study of devotion to ideals in the face of urban sprawl and moral decay.

Hertel Daggett is the physical and spiritual caretaker of the pet cemetery he inherited from his father. His solitude is intruded upon by an aspiring real estate magnate—a janitor who took a cable television real estate seminar—who enlists Hertel’s ex-wife, a world-weary deputy sheriff, and his long-lost mother, presumed dead but living the good life in Sacramento, to turn the property into cash.

Hertel’s fight to protect the 40 dried-up, burnt-out acres of dead pets from the forces of real estate and reality weaves dinosaurs, cavemen, Egyptians, amoebas, television evangelists, Godzilla and gospel music, answering the primal question: What makes man different from the other animals?

The New York Times says the play’s “shaggy sense of humor is the driving force,” while the NY Post called Dog Logic, “dog gone good.”

The cast includes Tomás Burkey as Hertel, the loyal man with a dog’s soul. Anna Bensaud plays Kaye, the ex-lover struggling between what’s right and what’s right in the “real” world. Kokila Byrne plays Hertel’s mother, Anita, whose motherly love and family loyalty gives new meaning to the word, “mercenary.” The fast-talking huckster Dale, who chases dreams like dogs chase cars, is played hysterically by a mystery actor. Michael Gottlieb directs.