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What happens to men left to their own devices, when these men are a mix of Arabs and Israelis, imbedded with years of resentment and hostility, when these men decide to stage a new version of Romeo and Juliet? According to TheatreCan, an Israeli production company who have brought DOGS to the New York Fringe Festival, they turn into…well, dogs. Not literally, though that might have made an alright play more interesting.

Branding itself as an “all-male Romeo and Juliet musical”, DOGS may be expected to be a light and fluffy piece of Israeli camp but it strives for something far deeper than that and, for some of it’s roughly ninety-minute runtime (about a half-hour too long), manages it.

The action of the play begins when two brothers, one of whom is gay, decided to stage Romeo and Juliet, reframing it as a way to express the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their cast, made up of friends, strangers and an Arab plumber, comes together in an explosion of what book writer Ido Bornstein describes as “sweaty, passionate Israeli manhood.” There are classic Hebrew songs updated with jazz-handy choreography (the actors give it their all but none of them are dancers), barely repressed sexual tension between some of the fighting men and, somewhat strangely, a male pregnancy. It is, at times, a bit of a mess, but mostly the play’s commitment to exploring it’s themes makes up for the confusion created by it’s storyline and translation.

Continue reading via Heeb

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