“Go Dog Go! Ve Perro ¡Ve!”

*****  Chicago Children’s Theatre is indeed a treasure for our city. Each time I visit their facility at 100 S. Racine, park my car, and enter their building, I know that I will be both educated and entertained. I am of an age where I had to find youngsters to assist me with my reviews of theater for children and young adults, and thanks to my son and daughter-in-law being god-parents to some youngsters, I have hit the jackpot. While I am certain that Anna and her brother Jack enjoy the experience, I must say without Mom, this could never happen. Today, we met for a kind of “world premiere” of P.D. Eastman’s “Go Dog Go!”.

This book has been around since 1961 and is an amazing tale of high mobile dogs who drive cars, boats, motor bikes in their everyday pursuit of both work and play. The adaptation to a musical play by Allison Gregory and  Steven Dietz is pretty amazing itself, and having Dietz direct this production shows the respect for quality this theater has. The production is bi-lingual ( English/Spanish) and of course, the music truly makes it spell binding for the little ones.

In many ways, watching this slick production ( 70 minutes with no intermission) is like watching a pop-up book come to life as we learn about the different dogs. From the onset, when MC Dog takes the stage ( a remarkable performance by Jean Carlos Claudio), the children become mesmerized by him. His eyes are bright, his smile a delight and his movement quite graceful. All of the dogs are powerful, with each having their own something special.

Yellow Dog ( Shawn Pfautsch is hysterical) and Red Dog (Tony Carter) along with Blue Dog (Clara Oshina) and Green Dog (Jalbelly Guzman) are MC Dog’s buddies and they get into mischief, play ball, have a luncheon date, drive cars, build a dog house and much more. There is also Hattie ( a powerful character created by Melanie Brezill), who only wants approval of her different head wear. These actors work together with the crew to keep the movement ongoing, never having a gap. This is what keeps the little ones into the story and the action. There is no time to get bored , so they continue to become engrossed in the action as they watch new ideas and surprises arise.

The other player is Rob Witmer who plays the accordion and is an intergerel part of the action we see. The design team :Lonnae Hickman/props,  Jazmin Aurora Medina/costumes, Jason Lynch/lighting, and a crew that keeps it all moving so that the youngsters are never lost. Not sure if I have them all, but a tip of the hat to Anastar Alvarez, Gianni Cacagno, Harper Crewes, Karen Wallace, Molly May and anyone else who helped keep the flow- great work!