Mayfest 2024 Review: Truth’s A Dog Must to Kennel, Tobacco Factory Theatres – ‘Unquestionably powerful’

The house lights never go down in Tim Crouch’s Truth’s a Dog’s Must to Kennel. He is alone onstage – with the exception of a BSL interpreter – wearing black clothes and a VR headset, and generates and maintains the world of the piece entirely, aided by occasional background music alone.

As such, we the audience feel like characters with in it, as he flits between wearied, wise-cracking standup taking aim at fictional audience members and being immersed in the world of King Lear via his headset, playing a meta, frustrated version of the Fool as the other characters turn on each other.

It’s a tricky conceit to pull off, and can occasionally be difficult to follow. At its best however, it is reminiscent of the barbed futility of Samuel Beckett’s works – “I’m a Fool but I’m not a fucking idiot”.

For the Shakespearean portions, we rely solely on Crouch’s voice, as during these he wears his VR headset, conveying the immersion in this world and separating it from the other. It’s a bold choice, as it hides his face, but is effective. He has presence and charisma, managing to make the Fool’s experience vivid and high stakes, and switching easily between that and the standup portions.

We follow the escalating disasters within King Lear, as the Duke of Gloucester is blinded and the King descends into madness, and this is juxtaposed with Crouch’s comments to the audience on the futility of theatre and the failure to rebuild and better it after Covid.

The former becomes a running theme. Crouch imparts the feeling that ultimately, neither the sage observations of his standup in the ‘real world’ – ‘We were so poor we had to melt the goldfish down’ – nor the frustrations of the Fool in King Lear, will impact the events in either.

A later extended segment, in which he describes an incestuous scatological talent show act at great length, doesn’t reach the dramatic peak it intends, as it’s so vividly grim that it takes us out of the moment and therefore doesn’t manage to be as profound as it hopes.

Tim Crouch in Truth’s A Dog Must to Kennel – photo: Stuart Armitt

There are so many layers of meta commentary it can sometimes be hard to see the wood for the trees; the audience is a conventional theatre audience, but also one serving a dramatic purpose within the standup portions, the Fool is a character within King Lear, bound to the monarch, but also commenting to the conventional audience on the events he observes and his feelings of powerlessness, and the entire piece is a metaphor for the decay and failures of royalty and the elite in general.

Towards the end, Crouch narrates a fictional audience member being taken ill and removed by ushers, paralleled with the Duke of Gloucester’s enlightenment after he is blinded. This is arguably the most effective section, as we can concentrate on the obvious mirroring of events and question the value of enlightenment, given that Gloucester dies regardless. Crouch is at his strongest as a solo performer here, holding the audience’s attention with ease.

Truth’s A Dog Must to Kennel is an unquestionably powerful work, impressive in its scope and performance, but one that could do with more clarity at times. The brief return to an innocuous piece of standup at the end reflects the question of the value of action at the piece’s core; everything we did made no difference.

Mayfest 2024 takes place in venues across Bristol from May 17-26. All tickets are Pay What You Can from as little as £5 (plus booking fees). For tickets and more information, visit www.mayk.org.uk/mayfest.

All photos: Stuart Armitt

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