Giving a Head Pat to "Dog Day Afternoon"

Just about everyone—and here I mean most of the critics—seems to have something bad to say about Dog Day Afternoon, the new Stephen Adly Guirgis adaptation of the 1975 movie about a bank robbery gone wrong that opened at the August Wilson Theatre this week (click here to listen to a quick summary of complaints about the show). But to my surprise, I had a pretty good time.

Maybe that's a result of expectations. Sidney Lumet’s movie and its iconic performances by Al Pacino and John Cazale have been beloved by generations of moviegoers (including me) and what seems to have most disappointed the people who don’t like the staged version is that it’s different from the film. But if you want an exact replica of the movie maybe you should just stay home and stream the movie. 

The story is the same in both versions cause each is based on a real-life crime chronicled in the old Life magazine (click here to read that). Here's the gist of it: a couple of guys named Sonny and Sal enter a Brooklyn bank around closing time on a hot summer day so that they can steal money to pay for the gender reassignment surgery for the person Sonny calls his wife but they end up bungling the robbery and have to hold the bank staff hostage until they can figure out how to get away. So screen and stage share the same narrative but it’s the tone that differs.

Before I saw the show, a friend emailed to say that it was “extremely goofy.” That’s not the adjective I’d choose but Guirgis and his director Rupert Goold do lean into the humor of two losers trying to pull off a simple heist. And a few days before the show opened the New York Times ran a story (click here for it) saying that the producers had temporarily barred Guirgis from the theater after he clashed with one of the show’s main producers.

But anyone who hands scriptwriting duties to Guirgis, the author of such irreverent plays as The Motherfucker With the Hat and Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, should know that they’re going to get a Guirgis show. And that means lots of characters, most of them struggling to make it on the margins of society and nearly all of them constantly wisecracking while doing it.  

This Dog Day stars the longtime friends Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, now probably best known for their roles as the dead brother and the tetchy cousin on the TV show “The Bear” (click here to read more about them). But Guirgis doesn’t really believe in star vehicles. His years as the in-house playwright for the LAByrinth Theater Company have instilled in him a love of stories filled with lots of colorful characters and a sense of duty to make sure that each of them gets at least a moment or two to shine. So they get backstories. They get dialogue. They get jokes. 

Some of the humor works. It’s fun to see Jessica Hecht who so often plays mousy characters getting to play a mouthy one as the head bank teller who challenges the robbers before eventually bonding with them. But some of the humor doesn’t work. Having the shot bank guard who has been lying on the stage for most of the first act rouse himself to make a lame joke about donuts isn’t worthy of even the dumbest TV sitcom.

On the other hand, Guirgis refuses to play Sonny’s relationship with a trans woman for laughs as the movie did with the straight actor Chris Sarandon flouncing around and crying hysterically in a way that made me uncomfortable even when I first saw it. Here the nonbinary actor Esteban Andres Cruz plays the character as a dry-eyed real person and gets to wisecrack just like everyone else. 

Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach make their characters their own too, not ignoring what Pacino and Cazale did with the roles but not imitating them either. Where Pacino’s Sonny was a fireball of angst, Bernthal’s is more boyishly ingratiating, which made it easier to understand why the hostages would eventually become so protective of him. John Ortiz, a frequent Guirgis collaborator, is also winning as the unflappable detective who negotiates with Sonny.

Now I’m not trying to change anyone's mind about the show but I am saying that if you're curious about the story or want to see the two guys from “The Bear” or simply want an entertaining evening out, you might find this Dog to have just enough bite.