A dramatic feature of “The Colette Project” being helmed by New College of Sarasota with its Alliances Francaise U.S.A. producers, three performances of Barks and Purrs appear first at New College and then at Florida Studio Theater. The play bespeaks Colette’s comic talent and love of animals. It amuses as three actors imitate two cats and a dog while occasionally becoming the pets’ owner and her male partner. Of the three free-with-reservations performances, it is the second that I saw at FST, whose Bowne venue proves a fine intimate space from which to view the actors’ often floor-hugging or on-their-back activity. A minimum of furnishings—desk and chair on one side, small sofa on the other and an oriental rug covering the nicely curtained stage—are put to maximum use. Projections introduce pix of author Colette hugging a cat on a screen at house left and with her doing same to a dog at house right. During the performance, projections of a city house porch, a train compartment view, and three rooms in a country house set the play’s five scenes. Lighting designates time and weather well for each. Most of the action involves Kiki-the-Demure (Anna Weatherwax, rightly haughty) and Toby-Dog (Will Luera, very proud French bull dog) struggling for prominence in their mistress’s affections and in their relations with each other. Sometimes she won’t even talk to him and thinks him too gross to be close to or confined with her. He disparages her as an egoist and critical of things—like how he smells after certain activity—which he finds she herself is guilty of. She does, after all, like to eat fish! Sometimes Luera and Weatherwax imitate the man and woman who affect the pets’ lives, and the actors make the transitions work. Finally, there appears someone threatening to each of them: Sylvia Day’s confident, sexy Little Dog, a toy terrier who toys with them over the influence she claims to have with their mistress and her man. Does she change the relationship of the first cat and the dog? It adds a bit of mystery to a comedy of conflict. I think all the animals “win” in their struggles of oneupsmanship via Colette’s way of describing them and the actors’ depiction. Barks and Purrs is a highlight of a an extensive worthwhile program of lectures, exhibitions, film showings, and discussions celebrating the 100th anniversary of Colette’s Cheri, that propelled her into literary prominence.
