Spencer Jones: Dogs review – barking comic sniffs out community through canines
Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
Behind this grab-bag of papier-mache heads and walkies banter lies a celebration of simply talking to one another
First came Ricky Gervais’s cynical cats; now here are Spencer Jones’s optimistic Dogs. One was tawdry, the other couldn’t be sweeter, as the prop-comic delivers this hymn to the canine-human relationship. Like much of Jones’s work, it’s a grab-bag, as he circles seemingly at random between character comedy in papier-mache heads, loop-pedal nonsense and dopey dog-walking business with an animatronic mutt. Not all of it is dog-related. And yet, it adds up to something winning, as Jones leads his four-legged friends towards a closing message about social cohesion in acrimonious times – and how our pets can help.
It begins as a chat with the audience about their animals, with Jones poshing it up in character as a snobby dog-walker. One strand of the show, taking as its motto the question “Aren’t humans weird?”, functions as a gleeful anthropology of dog owners. They carry bags of poo by their sides. They lose control of their hounds, and in that panic reveal their true selves. Their armoury includes something resembling a ladle – cueing, apropos of nothing, a very funny sequence in which Jones, in horsey false teeth, samples soup supposedly cooked by his audience.
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And crucially, they talk to one another – which might just save us, says Jones, in a homily bolted on to the end of his show. Coming from this performer, who radiates innocent idealism even at 50, you might even believe it. And if not, there’s still the pleasure of an hour spent celebrating the inner child, and spirit of play, in all of us. Highlights here, as Jones bounds way beyond the limits of his theme, include the tale of a brutal parental separation as seen through the eyes of an unwitting kid, and a chat between two blokes competing to suspend the most ash from the end of their ciggies.
There are arguably too many instances when Jones displays then abandons an idea (“I haven’t got any material for that …”) rather than develops it. I accepted that, finally, as part of the bricolage appeal of this very charming hour, a scrapbook full of wonky images of dogs, their owners and much else besides.
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