New York. Paris. Jazz music. Beat poetry. An actress impersonating a dog. What more could you ask for in a theatrical experience?
When the lights came on in the Hertz Stage at the Alliance Theatre last week, a sleeping dog awakes--and bursts into poetry. We’re surprised--until he throws back his pillow to reveal an entire book of poetry he has written. Later on in his journey throughout the streets of New York, he explains that he posts his poetry on walls near a delicatessen and, to prove his point, he emphatically plasters a page from his notebook onto a wall. This inspires the wrath of the butcher, who chases him through the streets of the city and engages the audience’s participation through entreaties on where to find the cunning canine.
This short scene contains the essence of Max Makes a Million, playing now through July 21. A canine poet cavorts through a New York transformed into a surreal dreamscape, both by the action on stage and the jazz score performed by an accomplished trio throughout the play. The trio interprets Max Stravinsky’s experiences as if they are taking place in a dream, helping to translate them into the beat poetry that finds its way into his notebook. The audience becomes a kind of extension of this surreal experience, which spreads throughout the city--and the theatre--guided by an agile performance by Melanie Sheahan, pointed percussion and a dogged persistence to entertain by the entire cast.
Max’s agent, who appears midway through the play, is able to sell Max’s book for a cool $1 million, and Max, whose dream is to make it to Paris, becomes an overnight success. His tenacity rewarded, Max races home to inform his owners, a shoe-maker husband and a dance-happy wife. They are preparing for a party, which concludes with Max’s cathartic reading of one of his best poems, a beat expression of joy and wonderment, a triumphant explosion of emotions that transcends the dance of the wife, the pomposity of Max’s unwelcome nemesis and even the physical confines of the theatre. Max has made it big and the audience, a living canvas for Max’s expression, is painted with such swirling splashes of words and emotion that we can’t help but feel that we’ve been painting alongside him.
* * * * *
[BACKGROUND NOTE: Max Makes a Million is adapted from the book by Maira Kalman, who among other things is known to readers of the New Yorker as an illustrator of some of that magazine’s most famous covers, including “Bulldog” from 2013. This adaptation is produced in collaboration with the High Museum of Art “The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children.” It was adapted for the stage by the distinguished theatre artist Liz Diamond, who is Chair of the Directing Program at Yale School of Drama.]
When the lights came on in the Hertz Stage at the Alliance Theatre last week, a sleeping dog awakes--and bursts into poetry. We’re surprised--until he throws back his pillow to reveal an entire book of poetry he has written. Later on in his journey throughout the streets of New York, he explains that he posts his poetry on walls near a delicatessen and, to prove his point, he emphatically plasters a page from his notebook onto a wall. This inspires the wrath of the butcher, who chases him through the streets of the city and engages the audience’s participation through entreaties on where to find the cunning canine.
This short scene contains the essence of Max Makes a Million, playing now through July 21. A canine poet cavorts through a New York transformed into a surreal dreamscape, both by the action on stage and the jazz score performed by an accomplished trio throughout the play. The trio interprets Max Stravinsky’s experiences as if they are taking place in a dream, helping to translate them into the beat poetry that finds its way into his notebook. The audience becomes a kind of extension of this surreal experience, which spreads throughout the city--and the theatre--guided by an agile performance by Melanie Sheahan, pointed percussion and a dogged persistence to entertain by the entire cast.
Max’s agent, who appears midway through the play, is able to sell Max’s book for a cool $1 million, and Max, whose dream is to make it to Paris, becomes an overnight success. His tenacity rewarded, Max races home to inform his owners, a shoe-maker husband and a dance-happy wife. They are preparing for a party, which concludes with Max’s cathartic reading of one of his best poems, a beat expression of joy and wonderment, a triumphant explosion of emotions that transcends the dance of the wife, the pomposity of Max’s unwelcome nemesis and even the physical confines of the theatre. Max has made it big and the audience, a living canvas for Max’s expression, is painted with such swirling splashes of words and emotion that we can’t help but feel that we’ve been painting alongside him.
* * * * *
[BACKGROUND NOTE: Max Makes a Million is adapted from the book by Maira Kalman, who among other things is known to readers of the New Yorker as an illustrator of some of that magazine’s most famous covers, including “Bulldog” from 2013. This adaptation is produced in collaboration with the High Museum of Art “The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children.” It was adapted for the stage by the distinguished theatre artist Liz Diamond, who is Chair of the Directing Program at Yale School of Drama.]
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