Pedigree chums... The Dog Walker, Jermyn Street Theatre

Pekingese are very good listeners which is more than can be said for most humans…

Paul Minx says his plays tend to stay with him, slowly marinating as the characters take over and begin to write themselves. The two in this play had their origins in the Nineties and, like lost dogs, have followed him through to their being wrote into existence for this quietly visceral and affecting play.

It was worth the wait as both dog walker Herbert Doakes and his client Keri, feel rounded and of such substance that they can hold contradictions as well as secrets even from the close-quarters audience in the Jermyn Street Theatre. Both take turns in being infuriating and almost utterly lost, propping themselves up with drink and drugs as well as the fantasy realities of work, irony and religion. As Keri says, “wounds heal but grief does not”, and Herbert, denying the failure of his marriage and Keri, blaming herself for a child’s death – caught in the cross-fire in front of her apartment – both try to lose themselves, to hide from their loss.

Minx’s dialogue is like vintage screwball pepped up with contemporary cussing and so well handled by both leads. Victoria Yeates makes for a febrile Keri, a role that could easily slip into ironic self-pity but she skilfully holds enough back to gain our sympathy and runs through so much emotional complexity when her relationship with Herbert begins to change in some alarming ways. The same can be said for Andrew Dennis as the more ostensibly comic Doakes, a man holding himself together through the disciplines of his dog walking job – Pups International – as well as self-help books such as The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Jamaicans. His story almost mirrors Keri’s as he goes from self-controlled/in denial to hard-floored reality over the course of the play’s three “movements” … music is ever present before and during the story and it is indeed a symphony of grief.

Andrew Dennis, all photographs courtesy of Robert Workman

“I am the most emotionally responsive dog walker in the district. I scored 4.8 on the City Empathy Test.”

At the start of the play we find Keri locked in self-pity as she drinks herself into a haze and dopes herself to meet the deadlines writing the e-books, such as Seven Habits… that people like Herbert read. She has a Pekingese dog, a bitch called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Herbert arrives to take it for the contractually required 28 minutes’ walk. But Keri is being evasive – drunk and disorderly – playing games with Herbert and greeting him on all fours barking like a dog.

Herbert recoils and recounts the numerous colleagues who simply refuse to take on one of the company’s more difficult customers. It soon emerges why Keri is so awkward as she explains about witnessing the child’s murder and being haunted by the Ghost Girl who she feels getting ever closer to avenging the transition from humanity to becoming a fatality…

Herbert is a man of many facets, in addition to working as a janitor he also has a college degree and is able to receipt Spenser’s Faerie Queene and yet he lacks spontaneity and holds himself tightly within the bounds of Christian and professional duty. He bangs heads uncomprehendingly against the quicksilver wit of Keri who is so free spirited she is deeply lost, bewildering him with depths of atheistic nihilism. Finally, Herbert becomes concerned with the dog’s health and says he needs to file a UPR – Unwell Pet Report – before, finally, we find out why Wolfgang isn’t really ready for her walk, as she is now an ex- Pekingese.

Herbert becomes more of a tragi-comic figure in the middle section as he ostensibly returns to give Keri the “cremains” of Wolfgang only for her to throw the urn out of her window. He has bought some of his “mummy’s” jerk chicken – or jerk-off chicken as Keri has it, as a way of connecting but she’s not buying it. Herbert then talks of his relationship difficulties with his wife Julia and asks for Keri’s help in learning how to properly “pet” her… he crosses the line and the intensity darkens between the two as Keri repeatedly asks him to leave.

Victoria Yeates and Andrew Dennis. Photo Robert Workman

It’s only in the spectacular final third that we truly understand these characters and what exactly they are trying to hold together. That’s skilful work from the playwright but the actors have to perform it and they both achieve the significant transitions required and, as has been noted elsewhere, these are two characters you really come to care about. Harry Burton directs with precision and sympathy whilst Isabella Van Braeckel’s set design turns the Jermyn stage into a steamy Manhattan apartment drenched in the desperate hope that, against all the odds, redemption is still possible.

IThankYouTheatre Rating: **** The Dog Walker is as honest as the long summer days are long in New York City and that is why you laugh with and care so much about these brittle souls; we all like dogs but most of all we crave unconditional love. That’s one thing this smart production deserves too.

The Dog Walker plays at the JST until Saturday 7th March, tickets via their box office.