ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Someone is kidnapping the dalmatians of London–specifically, the 15 puppies of Pongo and Missis of Regents Park. And though Mr. and Mrs. Dearly (whom we egotistical humans would call their owners) have even called Scotland Yard, ultimately it’s up to the parents to deliver not only their own tots but scores of others from a grisly fate at the hands of the fashionable but heartless Cruella DeVil. Communicating through an oral network (the precise nature of which audience members are sworn never to reveal), the entire canine population of England–and a few feline representatives as well–unite to pull off one of the most perilous and thrilling rescues since Ingrid Bergman led the orphans to freedom in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.
Under Dorothy Milne’s spirited direction, Lifeline’s all-star cast gallop through their paces with agility and precision, keeping each character distinct–no easy task with two actors (Karen Hough and Greg Holliman, whom Lifeline regulars will remember as the Chicken Man in Lizard Music) playing no less than eight roles, ranging from DeVil’s slow-witted toughs to the “gentle, obedient, and unusually intelligent . . . almost canine at times” Mr. and Mrs. Dearly. J. David Blazevich and Kristie Berger, the only actors to play only one role apiece, make Pongo and Missis suitably naive but courageous. The good folks can only be as good as the bad are bad, however, and Alexandra Billings, never one to let her audience down, delivers a hallelujah chorus of a performance as Cruella DeVil–costumed like a strutting yeti, chortling malevolently in three octaves, and generating so much flat-out menace that one child scrambled over three laps to put more distance between herself and the environmentally incorrect villainess. (Note to audience members: don’t wear a fur coat to this play unless you’re prepared to be identified with mass murder.)
