The cast of Dog Man: The Musical, from left, Dan Rosales, DeShawn Bowens, Brian Owen, L.R. Davidson, Crystal Sha’nae, and Jamie LaVerdiere. The musical embraces the zany fun of the cartoon series that it is based on.Jeremy Daniel/Mirvish
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- Title: Dog Man: The Musical
- Written by: Kevin Del Aguila and Brad Alexander
- Director: Jen Wineman
- Actors: Brandon James Butorovich, Metri Lyons, Gage Thomas, Glory Yepassis-Zembrou, Jake Wernecke, Sadie Jayne Kennedy
- Company: Mirvish
- Venue: CAA Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: To June 9, 2024
Who’s a good cop?
With the head of a dog and the body of a man – a police officer and his K9 partner sewn together after a tragic explosion – Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man sniffs out crime when he’s not sniffing butts.
Based on the first three books in the Captain Underpants writer’s best-selling comic series (particularly Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties), Dog Man: The Musical breeds together a tale of cloning criminal cats and telekinetic cyborg fish that’s part Dog Man and part musical – and all fun.
Fifth graders George Beard (Metri Lyons) and Harold Hutchins (Gage Thomas) serve as the framing device for the caninsanity. After studying A Tale of Two Cities and being turfed from the school production of Annie for being too rambunctious, they decide to make a show of their own. After all, they muse, how hard can it be to write a musical?
Adapting their comics, they present Dog Man’s origin of species and then set about creating the villains that land him in the doghouse. The Chief’s pet fish Flippy (Glory Yepassis-Zembrou) eats too many “Brain Dots” and develops mental powers; carping about his mistreatment at the hands of Dog Man (who loves to roll in dead fish), he goes on a rampage.
Meanwhile, Dog Man’s previous nemesis, Petey the “feline felon,” escapes from jail and decides to clone himself to create double the mayhem – except the clone comes out in child form. The sunny kid clashes with the evil plans of his stormy “Papa” before L’il Orphan Petey is turfed out and adopted by Dog Man (or should I say Daddy Woofbucks).
Brian Owen, left, and L.R. Davidson in Dog Man: The Musical. Dog Man’s cast keeps up the high energy throughout the performance.Jeremy Daniel/Mirvish
Dog Man’s cast keeps up the high energy throughout, with Jake Wernecke a standout doing his best British camp villain as Petey. As L’il Petey, Sadie Jayne Kennedy has an excellent sense of comic timing and an impressively high-pitched, piping voice perfect for conveying a cartoon kitten.
Though Dog Man is the only character inexplicably unable to speak or sing – cats, fish and even buildings wax rhapsodic – Brandon James Butorovich still shows he has the grr-range. A moment when he howls disconsolately after being instructed to properly display his remorse over a case gone wrong, only to immediately look to his chastiser for approval with tail-wagging anticipation, is so dog-like it hurts. Since, ironically, he can’t participate in musical theatre’s traditional “park and bark,” George and Harold musicalize his thoughts for him.
Much like Pilkey’s drawings, the show’s design has a deliberate and charming child-crafted feel despite its higher budget, merging comic-style backdrops with more realistic set pieces and keeping props consistent with items a 10-year-old could scrounge from the garage. Petey’s robot assistant, 80-HD (sound it out) is a repurposed exercise ball and flip-flops; buildings are brightly painted cardboard with arm holes; a mother’s “French scarf” becomes a trail of French dressing.
Music by Brad Alexander is bright and catchy, with Happy Song the most likely earworm. Kevin Del Aguila’s simple but often clever lyrics play up the fact that Pilkey’s characters delight in grammatical idiosyncrasies and wordplay; singing Dog Man is Go makes no sense, the fifth graders acknowledge, but they like it anyway, so the dog stays in the picture.
When Petey discovers his ability to love himself extends to his tiny clone, he croons “Me are all I ever wanted … Me are always on my mind,” giving us the most incongruous pronouns this side of Cookie Monster. And, as we watch a re-enactment of Dog Man’s creation, the surgical team sings that the new hybrid’s “head is fuzzy, but his body is the Fuzz.”
Dog Man feels equally comfortable parodying Dickens and delivering a fart joke. There’s broad humour, but no talking down to either of its audiences. Its appeal to the adults in the room mostly lies in sly references to literature, musicals and dated pop culture references; simultaneously, it skewers the mundanities of the working world through a child’s point of view, such as in Lyons’s utterly apathetic employee in charge of the miraculous Living Spray Factory (a spray that brings anything it touches to life).
Most importantly, it never relies on tired innuendo or making fun of what children care about. The show may feel a tad relentless for the truly exhausted parents in the audience, but most will find something to chew on.
The cast of Dog Man performs a musical number.Jeremy Daniel/Mirvish
In that vein, perhaps the most refreshing thing about Dog Man is that it’s silly and irreverent, but also completely earnest. The fifth graders running the show may think that they’re slightly too cool for the school musical, but they’re not too cool to enjoy the act of creation that leads to their main character fighting off nominally sentient buildings with a truck of salad dressing.
While many modern meta-musicals feel the need to appear vaguely dismissive of or apologetic about their own form, this one merely embraces the zany fun. Though the wholesome message about the power of interspecies friendship hits more obviously, the show sends a subtler signal to kids is that it’s okay to let your imagination run amok and make things that are meaningful to you.
It’s more finishing the cat than Finishing the Hat, but it’ll do.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)