Show Summary

The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane

Diversionary Theatre’s sixth and final production of the 2008-2009 season is the biting contemporary comedy The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane.  Directed by Robert Barry Fleming,this play takes a look at the scandalous world of Hollywood celebrities.  Players in this fast-paced and hilarious farce include a spin-doctor agent, a rising movie star, a sexy “rent-boy” and his naïve and needy girlfriend.  With photographers itching to catch the latest in celebrity gossip, a compromising photo can make or break your career.  The Little Dog Laughed asks the question, “is there an escape from Hollywood’s glass closet or is it better to just stay locked in from the inside?” The cast features Karson St. John as the agent, Brian Mackey as the movie star, Bryan Bertone as the rent boy, and Kelly Iversen as the girlfriend.  The Little Dog Laughed contains adult content and brief nudity.

Creative Team

Bryan Bertone	Kelly Iversen	Brian Mackey	Karson St. John

Press Photos

Pictured (l-r): Karson St. John and Brian Mackey. Photo: Ken Jacques Photography	Pictured: Karson St. John.
Pictured (l-r): Bryan Bertone and Brian Mackey. Photo: Ken Jacques Photography	Pictured (l-r): Kelly Iversen and Bryan Bertone. Photo: Ken Jacques Photography
Pictured (l-r): Bryan Bertone and Brian Mackey. Photo: Ken Jacques Photography	The Little Dog Laughed logo: JPEG format

Press Release

Diversionary closes season with biting comedy
“The Little Dog Laughed”

Diversionary Theatre’s sixth and final production of the 2008-2009 season is the biting contemporary comedy The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane.  Directed by Robert Barry Fleming,this play takes a look at the scandalous world of Hollywood celebrities.  Players in this fast-paced and hilarious farce include a spin-doctor agent, a rising movie star, a sexy “rent-boy” and his naïve and needy girlfriend.  With photographers itching to catch the latest in celebrity gossip, a compromising photo can make or break your career.  The Little Dog Laughed asks the question, “is there an escape from Hollywood’s glass closet or is it better to just stay locked in from the inside?”

The Little Dog Laughedwas nominated for a 2007 Best Play Tony Award and Julie White won the Best Actress Tony Award for her role as the Hollywood agent.  “Theatergoers have cause to rejoice. Devastatingly funny, with dizzy, irresistible writing that brings down the house.” – NY Times.

Douglas Carter Beane’s stage credits include Xanadu, As Bees in Honey Drown, and Dancing in the Dark among others.  Beane also provided the script for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar.  He is a founding member of Drama Dept. and member of the Dramatist Guild.

Fleming won a 2008 Craig Noel Award for Outstanding Featured Performance by a Male in a Musical for his performance in Ain’t Misbehavin’ at the San Diego Rep.  He is Director of the Theatre Arts Program at the University of San Diego.  The cast features Karson St. John as the agent, Brian Mackey as the movie star, Bryan Bertone as the rent boy, and Kelly Iversen as the girlfriend.  The Little Dog Laughed contains adult content and brief nudity.

Started in 1986, the mission of Diversionary Theatre is to produce plays with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes that portray characters in their complexity and diversity both historically and contemporarily. 

The Little Dog Laughed  will preview on May 7 and 8, and open on Saturday, May 9 and run through Sunday, May 31.  Performance times are: Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday & Saturday at 8:00pm and Sunday at 2:00 & 7:00pm, with an additional performance on Monday, May 18 at 7:30pm.  Single tickets, priced $29-$33 with discounts for seniors, students and military, go on sale in April.  Food for the opening night party provided by The Mission Restaurant.  For information, call the Diversionary box office at 619.220.0097 or log on to www.diversionary.org.
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Financial support for Diversionary Theatre is provided in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Reviews

San Diego News Network (sdnn.com)
By Pat Launer
Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Laugh Your Doggone Head Off

THE SHOW: “The Little Dog Laughed,” a 2006 comedy, nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, at Diversionary Theatre

Remember the Faye Dunaway character in the movie “Network?” She was a heartless, soulless workaholic who had nothing in her life but getting the job done - perfectly, if ruthlessly. Well, meet her Hollywood doppelganger, the cold-blooded, uncompromising talent agent, Diane. She’ll do absolutely anything to make her prime product, Mitchell, into a star. He’s well on his way, except that he has a “slight recurring case of homosexuality.” And he seems to have fallen in love with the rent-boy he called up to amuse him while on a junket in New York. That cute little male prostitute, Alex, a boarding school alum, is enigmatically tied to a flip party-girl, Ellen. Diane is apoplectic; in her mind, if Mitchell comes out, he’s finished. If he takes on a gay role in an enticing new movie, it’s not an acting stretch; it’s “bragging.” How these relationships play out, how Diane maneuvers and manipulates everyone’s lives to her own best advantage, is a stunningly comic, whiplash-inducing ride. The writing is terrific; Douglas Carter Beane, who wrote the libretto for “Xanadu,” among many other creations, is smart and sassy and endlessly, intelligently amusing. The dialogue is exceedingly fast and funny; under the astute direction of Robert Barry Fleming, skilled actor/singer/dialect coach and assistant professor at USD, the cast crackles.

Brian Mackey, looking excellent in reddish-brown hair (he’s normally a blond), is aptly cool and genuinely unpretentious as Mitchell, and Kelly Iversen is delightfully insouciant but cynical as Ellen. Handsome Bryan Bertone, who was recently the sex-object in Cygnet Theatre’s production of “The History Boys,” plays this sex-object a tad flat, and he doesn’t quite seem like a refugee from a privileged life. Nonetheless, his Bad Boy demeanor is just right, he gets more spirited as he gets further involved, and his connection with Mackey works very well. Despite an excellent ensemble effort, this play always belongs to Diane. And Karson St. John, a recent transplant from New York, delivers 1000%, in an absolutely spellbinding performance. She’s gorgeous, for starters, and wears Jennifer Brawn Gittings’ classy costumes with aplomb. Her red lipstick alone is riveting. Every moment she’s on the stage, she sparkles and scintillates. Which is not to say that her character is in any way likable. But she nails every merciless moment. Her lunch with the (unseen) playwright, where she and Mackey try to wrest his play from him, in order to turn into a movie, while at the same time reporting the event to us, referring to the writer as “he meaning him,” is absolutely sidesplitting. It goes by so fast, it makes you want an instant replay. Ditto the moment when the writer says he wants Diane to give her word about the deal, and at that bizarre request, her face contorts into an explosion of twitches. She finally deadpans the scene-ender: “You have my word as an entertainment industry professional.”

There are too many lines and too many laughs to re-create. You’ll want to see it more than once to get every line and word. The set (Jungah Han), mostly a big bed center stage, is serviceable, and the lighting (Chris Renda) is fine. George Yé’s sound design is especially tasty.

Having toiled in the barren fields of Hollywood (he wrote “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar”), Beane knows exactly what he’s talking about. It rings, it zings, it kills.

THE LOCATION: Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd. (619) 220-0097; www.diversionary.org

THE DETAILS: Tickets: $25-33; $10 Student Rush. Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., through May 31. Special Pay What You Can performance on Monday May 18 at 7:30 p.m.

THE BOTTOM LINE: BEST BET

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sandiego.com

"The Little Dog Laughed" at Diversionary Theatre
Sublime bitchiness
By WeltonJones
Posted on Sun, May 10th, 2009

Many, many very good play-writers have had their turn at heaping scorn and sarcasm on the movie industry, which really doesn’t even notice. I thought I had seen the ultimate when David Mamet gave us “Speed-the-Plow.”

Well, there’s a new contender. Now playing at Diversionary Theatre. Don’t blame me if you procrastinate and can’t get tickets for I shall now proceed to rave.

Douglas Carter Beane is no Mamet, but he’s got some leverage Mamet didn’t have, an outed gay audience primed to savor not only the raging nihilism but also the virtuoso bitchiness of Hollywood combat.

This movie star headed up the status ladder is in New York at his agent’s insistence to see and be seen around a play that might turn into his career-defining movie role. Boy-next-door straight actor playing heavy dramatic gay character has awards written all over it.

Except this actor really IS gay, even if he looks to be the last to know. His habit of hiring male hustlers to join him in his hotel room, which he only does now and then, is just, oh, a diversion. A novelty he learned in the Boy Scouts: “The merit badge that dare not speak its name.”

As fate and theatrical plots often have it, the particular hired companion of the moment turns out to be an old American theatrical icon: the Whore With a Heart of Gold. (This is one of several stereotypes employed by Beane and director Robert Barry Fleming to excellent effect.)

In due course, star and tart (he isn’t really gay either, he insists) began to explore a life together but, given the insecurities and pride and whatever, it’s looking like a lot of work is going to be needed.

And that’s when the show’s compass, its ballast and rudder and main propulsion unit, takes over.

The agent.

What a part! And what an actress Fleming has found to play it! (More on Karson St. John directly.)

Within the first few minutes of the play, she has the audience singing along on “Moon River.” Whenever some swirling sentiment seems to be sticking, she’s back to restore the purity of the cynicism. And when the plaguey problems of the little people (there’s also the hustler’s girlfriend to manage) intrude, then she drops in like a Moliere deus ex machina and executes a warm and happy ending appropriate for the occasion.

For some reason, the author has this paragon of unapologetic venality confess early that she’s a Lesbian. Nothing comes of this – “Who has time?” she asks, rhetorically – and I find it gratuitous. But, hey, you won’t find me complaining about anything, really, that author, director and actress do with this part.

Karson St. John, splendidly dressed by Jennifer Brawn Gittings, drapes her long, lean, expensive body over some piece of Jungah Han’s chic set, purses her lush lips, widens her bright eyes and simply displays the divinity.

She’s so exactly right and so capable of floating the audience on clouds of swooning glee that she sometimes forgets to hold the next line until enough of the laughter has cleared.

Take your time, darling. None of us have anything better to do.

Brian Mackey plays the movie star with cool competence. Bryan Bertone manages a believable boyishness as the hustler but he doesn’t really grapple with how anybody in such a trying trade could maintain so much sweetness.

As the girlfriend (they’ve been together since high school but now, she says, they’re 24 and life is hopeless) who has herself turned a trick or two, Kelly Iverson starts strongly but trails away into sullen distraction.

None of this particularly effects the play’s churning drive toward that fluffy ending. There’s not even time here for irony, just a sense of Corruption’s Express rushing past in the dark night of the soul.

About the author: Welton Jones has been reviewing shows for 50 years as of October 2007, 35 of those years at the UNION-TRIBUNE and, now, six for SANDIEGO.COM where he wrote the first reviews to appear on the site.

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Pat Launer’s Center Stage
KSDS Jazz 88.3

“The Little Dog Laughed” – Diversionary Theatre

Artists in crisis: A piano prodigy who lacks the passion to play, and a movie star who fears that coming out will destroy his career. How each resolves his existential dilemma is the stuff of theatrical innovation. One character lives in a slick, fast-paced comedy of Hollywood homophobia; the other, in a deeply-felt drama with dark anti-Semitic undertones.

In “The Little Dog Laughed,” integrity is a nonexistent commodity. Set in New York and Hollywood, the sharp, smart comedy is all about artifice and deal-making. Douglas Carter Beane is a very very funny writer, and the Diversionary Theatre staging of his 2006 play, excellently directed by Robert Barry Fleming, is a very funny production, anchored by the stunning, fast-talking, charismatic Karson St. John. The recent San Diego transplant is a genuine gem, and she totally nails the soulless, smiling barracuda of an agent, who has a product she’s going to promote come hell or high water. That product is Mitchell, an up-and-coming actor who falls hard for a rent-boy who’s hooked up with a party girl. So, should Mitchell be true to his heart, or to his career?

The agent Diane narrates, punctuates, defines and controls, forcing everyone into a deal that makes pretty much no one happy – except Diane. And she wouldn’t recognize happiness if it slapped her in her perfectly made-up face. As an outstanding cast navigates these shark-filled waters, you’ll be knocked out by the killer dialogue and rat-a-tat timing.

Now your artistic dilemma is: Which do you see first, the comedy or the drama?

“The Little Dog Laughed” runs through May 31 at Diversionary Theatre in Hillcrest.
“Old Wicked Songs” also continues through May 31, at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach

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Scene-stealing 'agent' leads biting 'Little Dog Laughed'
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
ANNE MARIE WELSH - For the North County Times

Brash Hollywood agent Diane harbors no illusions about the movie biz she loves, loathes and can’t live without. And from her opening salvo about the naive matinee idol she's grooming for mega-stardom, actor Karson St. John fills the role to the brim ---- and then some.

St. John is the best, though not the only, reason to catch Diversionary Theatre's new production of Douglas Carter Beane's "The Little Dog Laughed." She nails a role that, three years ago, the hyperkinetic Julie White electrified and seemed to own forever in New York. The estimable White won a Tony for her acid and hilarious portrayal of this wily manipulator, a woman whose machinations are so firmly rooted in real insight and tawdry truths about people that she's likable in spite of herself.

Diane has come east from L.A. with her main meal ticket, actor Mitchell Green. Among other functions, she'll be his date at an awards ceremony. Better her than his mother, she tells us. (He's innocent enough to think bringing his mother along would deflect any suspicion that this purported sex symbol is gay.)

Curvy and elegant in a form-fitting, spangled and ruched sapphire sheath, St. John delivers Beane's witty and energetic goods in an opening monologue and a later show-stopping riff on legal contracts escalating into infinity and beyond. First seen locally in another motor-mouth comic role at Ion, the actor owns the confident rhythms and big synthetic smile that tell you she's in charge of the evening ---- and the relationships unfolding all around her.

After stints as a movie and TV writer, Beane emerged as a playwright with his breakthrough comedy, "As Bees in Honey Drown"; he also did the books for the Broadway and La Jolla Playhouse productions of "Xanadu" and the Globe's still-evolving "Dancing in the Dark." He structured "The Little Dog Laughed" as a series of spotlit interior riffs, delivered by characters side-by-side or alternating and intercut with more conventional encounters.

One unexpected delight of the Diversionary production is the speed and expertise with which director Robert Barry Fleming moves his cast from one mode to the other, never skipping a beat or missing a laugh in Beane's crackling, one-liner-strewn writing.

Diane is the keeper of the plot's central conceit: In Hollywood even now, a matinee idol can do anything he wants in the closet; he just has to shut up about it in public. He can even play a gay role and earn Brownie points for nobility, so long as the paying public thinks he's straight.

And that's another reason the agent and her charge are in New York. She enlists him to help her secure the movie rights to a play featuring two gay men. He'll be attached to the "property" as the star. One high point is their luncheon seduction of this famous playwright, previously burned by his work in Hollywood.

After giving "her word" that she'll maintain the integrity of the playwright's work on film, Diane confides, "A writer with final cut: I would rather give firearms to small children."

Beane works new permutations on the old movie-code hypocrisy by giving the star, Mitchell (Brian Mackey), and his new squeeze, the young rent-boy Alex (Bryan Bertone), denials and doubts about themselves. Add Diane's candor about being a lesbian who gets off on work, not sex, stir in Alex's party-loving "girlfriend" with her own confusion about what she wants out of sex and life, and the play has plenty of serious resonance.

But give those serious moments too much heft and the bubble bursts. One questionable choice at Diversionary has Mackey as the movie star going all Method-y during a particularly intense scene of self-discovery toward the end. Young Mackey is not quite mature and beefy enough for the part to begin with. When Mitchell's dilemma plays too real, we feel too much empathy for his dilemma and the satire curdles.

Mackey was first paired with Bertone in the more layered writing of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" earlier this year at Cygnet. As Alex, Bertone has the great looks and convincing sincerity of a street-smart kid who might actually open to love with a messed-up movie idol.

Bertone is especially good in Alex's pretending-to-be-asleep monologue, ping-ponging from denial to final acceptance that he's gay. Beane's writing is riotous here as the kid waffles, stream-of-consciousness-style, from feeling "gay as a goose" to thinking he couldn't be: The minute anybody on screen "even looks as if they're going to sing, I'm embarrassed for everyone," he says.

Meanwhile, his terminally hip girlfriend Ellen (Kelly Iverson) deadpans lines like "We're 24; hope is dead." Iverson got off to a shaky start on opening night, but hit stride as the show moved her character toward Diane's engineered surprise ending.

Aside from the occasional tonal miscue, Fleming, with big assists from designers Chris Renda (lights), George Ye (sound) and Jennifer Brawn Gittings (costumes), here makes a strong directorial debut at Diversionary.

While the U.S. military considers changing its muddled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, St. John's savvy Diane with her elegant clothes, striking jewelry and shrewd wisecracks, knows better about Hollywood.

"You can love or do whatever you want," she tells her faltering client Mitchell, "All you have to do is shut up!"

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San Diego Union-Tribune
THEATER REVIEW
Lines, leading actress set 'Little Dog' on fire
By James Hebert Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 11, 2009

“The Little Dog Laughed” has barely worked up a smirk when Karson St. John, playing a deliciously caustic Hollywood agent named Diane, starts goading the audience to sing along with her on “Moon River.”

That river, you'll recall from the lyrics (or will by the time Diane's through with you), is “wider than a mile.” Meanwhile, Douglas Carter Beane's play – which just opened at Diversionary Theatre – is about as deep as a rain puddle.

But this comedy about the closets of show biz (and not the ones stuffed with Jimmy Choo shoes, either) has a couple of big points in its favor: matchless laugh lines by the ever-clever Beane, and a scorcher of a lead performance by St. John.

Funny thing, though: Her first-scene monologue is a kvetch about the way the romance of “Breakfast at Tiffany's” (the 1961 movie that introduced “Moon River”) gets stomped all over by the entrance of Mickey Rooney, ill-advisedly cast as a bucktoothed Japanese landlord.

Nothing nearly that unfortunate is visited upon director Robert Barry Fleming's staging of “The Little Dog Laughed,” but the start of Diversionary's production does seem to promise a zippier show than this one winds up being. And part of the issue has to do with casting.

Diane is the agent and longtime confidante to Mitchell (Brian Mackey), a rising Hollywood star who has, as Diane puts it, “a slight recurring case of homosexuality.” That condition turns acute when Mitchell meets Alex (Bryan Bertone), emissary from a male escort service.

Mitchell insists he isn't gay, though he ordered up the “rent boy.” So does Alex, who has a sort-of girlfriend named Ellen (Kelly Iversen) but has made a profession of sleeping with men. Soon, though, the two start falling for each other.

This is a problem for Diane, because her meal-ticket of a leading man is supposed to be both hunky and hetero. The inspired irony is that she is about to land him in a major role as a gay man, and fears people won't buy this “brave” turn if they find out it's not such a stretch.

As she phrases it, when “the pretty lady puts on a fake nose, she wins an Oscar.” But when a non-closeted star plays a gay role, “it's not acting. It's bragging.”

So Diane, about to see her movie dreams go ka-boom, eventually hits on a mad scheme to keep everyone happy and the moviegoing public in blissful ignorance about who's really sleeping with whom.

Beane knows this territory, having done time in Hollywood – most prominently with his 1995 movie “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.”

He also earned a 2007 Tony nom for “Little Dog,” his Broadway debut. Julie White went one better, winning the Tony for playing Diane.

Mackey, an accomplished local actor who's turned in a string of strong performances lately, seems too edgy (and maybe a little too young) for what should be a dashingly vanilla sort of movie star.

Bertone, who was likewise a standout in Cygnet's recent “The History Boys,” seems stuck in a monotone (at least in the early going), both vocally and emotionally. His character could use more of a sense of risk, more of a spark to light the satire on fire.

But this is really St. John's show, and she plays Diane like some mongrel mix of Jennifer Aniston and Wile E. Coyote. Her devious streak is wider than a mile; so are the guilty smiles she entices.

This n That

San Diego Reader
Character from Costume
By Jeff Smith | Published Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A fitting session with costume designer Jennifer Brawn Gittings begins to look a lot like Christmas. She hauls racks of clothes and boxes of shoes to Diversionary Theatre’s small dressing room, where the four actors in The Little Dog Laughed await their outfits. Gittings — nicknamed JBG — unhooks a slinky, floor-length crimson gown and hands it to an actor. She opens two boxes of shoes for another. “Try this,” she says to Bryan Bertone, who plays Alex, a hustler/rent boy. He dons a black leather jacket with two white, horizontal racing stripes across the front. Gittings steps back, shakes her head. “It’s him,” she says, “but if you wear that for two hours, I’ll get sick of it.”

She hands Bertone a black canvas Rogue jacket, so distressed it reads brown, with a mandarin collar. The look is more street, more Alex. “Work okay?”

“A little warm-ish.”

“Fixable.”

Karson St. John, who plays Diane, a cynical Hollywood agent, comes back in the red gown. Not happening: “Diane should look stunning and elegant,” says Gittings, “not slinky-glitzy, not mistaken for an actress. We can do better.”

Two actors ask if they can buy costumes after the show closes. Gittings doesn’t say, for two reasons: she’ll have to return the rejects (“trouble with thrift stores: no return policy; place like Marshall’s: you aren’t happy, bring it back”); and many theaters sell costumes to actors at 50 percent of what the designer paid. But sometimes the company will want to keep an item in stock and may not make that decision until the run concludes.

Kelly Iversen, who plays hip, world-battered Ellen, falls for a pair of burnt-orange flannel heels trimmed with satin bows. “I WANT these,” she says. “What were they, $80, $150?”

No reply. Gittings is too busy checking the shoes against her image of Ellen, whose despair expands by the hour. Something this warm, Gittings decides, “hints at bright spots in her future. Her colors should darken and lose chroma as she descends.

“Seven dollars at Payless,” she adds, taking the shoes back. The difference between the eye-appeal and the cost pleases her. Little Dog is a fashion-conscious play. But she must “create a Neiman Marcus look on a T.J. Maxx budget.”

Even before she won the 2008 Craig Noel Award for costume design — Diversionary’s Scrooge in Rouge — Gittings has been one of San Diego theater’s most in-demand designers. “JBG’s my favorite collaborator,” says Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, artistic director of Moxie Theatre. “I call her ‘story girl’ because her attention to storytelling and play analysis often keeps the team on the right path. I love the way she collaborates with other designers. It’s amazing. She’s completely focused on costumes but fully aware of the big picture.”

Gittings has a BA in theater arts from UCLA and an MFA from Rutgers in scenic and costume design. Of every character she asks: “Where would this person shop?”

She shops all over and relishes “the thrill of the hunt,” finding designer clothing for less than designer prices. Among her discoveries for Little Dog: “gorgeous” Helmut Lang pants and a black, silk satin, Badgley Mischka corset, both for 90 percent off. With every show, though, individual pieces may have been built, rented, pulled from stock, or purchased, Gittings strives for a cohesive look. One goal with Little Dog: “People can’t tell the Payless heels from the Elie Tahari’s.”

Many a colleague has asked to ride along when Gittings shops, but she prefers to travel light. She knows when stores close and makes her rounds accordingly: before 9:00 p.m., before 10, midnight. When she’s at home, with husband Chris and 22-month-old son Oliver, she’s often “ripping.” She pours through magazines, catalogues, ads, newspapers, tearing out images of fashion, make-up, hairstyles for her “visual library,” a file cabinet loaded with rippings from ancient Egypt to the 21st Century, the latter having six thick folders.

“Our house rule: no ripping when Chris is asleep. Then I use scissors.”

In a preproduction meeting, Gittings and director Robert Barry Fleming shared ideas. They also suggested current references. Ellen, for example, reminds Gittings of Lily Allen. The British pop singer has “a surprising amount of emotional baggage for someone 22 — a total train wreck. Then in the end Ellen becomes all Katie Holmes — and, like, yayyyyy!”

Gittings has designed for various periods. With contemporary plays, she says, “a designer receives a lot more input, which may or may not be appropriate for the storytelling.” Gittings tries to keep things in context: costumes reflect how characters “present themselves to the world,” their mood, thoughts, aspirations, background. “An actress told me once, ‘I can’t wear that color. I’m a spring.’ I just smiled and replied, ‘I understand, but your character is a winter.’”

Douglas Carter Beane’s “comedy of contemporary manners” pits personal dreams against The Dream. The four characters have a near pathological aversion to happiness. Like the people in Beane’s hilarious As Bees in Honey Drown, Mitch stands at the cusp of fame. But will the award-winning movie star choose what everyone’s supposed to want — the white-bread, Tinseltown ending — or admit to yearnings he’s kept sealed away?

The play moves from winter in New York to sunny Southern California. “That’s two color worlds,” says Gittings, “so it’s high fashion on both coasts.” New Yorkers, she adds, don’t dress like Sex and the City. “In cold weather they wear neutrals, especially people who walk to work and want to hide the grime: so grey, blue, and black, and no enhancing colors.”

Little Dog allows Gittings to use two approaches to costume design: “character at once” and “layering.” In the former, when an actor walks on stage, “you get it.” For Scrooge in Rouge’s 28 costumes, everyone knew the Dickens story. So she parodied that expectation. Fezziwig, for example, wore exaggerated tartan plaid pants, goofy buckled shoes, and bright teal green cutaway coat with red buttons. “And he’s drunk as hell at a party.”

In Little Dog, Alex, the rent boy, changes least. “He is what he is,” says Gittings, who gives him a “character at once” look: the Rogue jacket with the mandarin collar, tight jeans, scarf, “hoodie.” The one debatable point: should he wear socks with his black tennies?

“Socks aren’t sexy,” says Gittings. “It’s hard to look sexy if you’re standing in your underwear with your socks on,” which Alex does in Act one. Although New York males would certainly wear them in winter, even in dishabille, “here’s an instance where the aesthetic wins out over the practical. No socks.”

“Layer” design, says Gittings, is the opposite of “character at once”: costumes reflect ongoing changes. In Little Dog, everyone starts with a veneer that conceals their turmoil — and that slowly cracks. “So you begin with clothes that reflect the surface, then chip away.”

Mitch, the movie star, almost changes completely. “He’ll always have a tailored silhouette,” says Gittings, who starts him in a modern tux — “but one Johnny Depp might wear, not Martin Scorsese” — then gradually shifts to a lighter palette in California.

Diane, the agent/wannabe producer, has a “power silhouette,” says Gittings. “She’s all pulled together in a slick, high-money look.” Even her spiked shoes reflect status. “The richer you are in New York, the less you have to walk — thus, the higher the heel.

“Costumes should support the actors and the story,” says Gittings. “The focus should always be up here” — she waves a hand across her face. For this reason, after a careful discussion, Gittings and Karson St. John decided to tone down Diane’s flashy nail polish to a less upstaging hue.

Little Dog roars with ironies, including one for Gittings. Amid her countless choices and fine-tuning of 19 costumes, the last scene throws her overall design for a loop. “Costumes should support the characters, right? Well two of the outfits, believe it or not, must break all the rules. They should actually look like costumes!”