Humanity untamed in ‘Heart of a Dog’

The world is going to the dogs, you say? A look at the clever novella turned play “Heart of a Dog” might get you thinking: If only it would.

In the 1925 novella by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, human glands are implanted into a dog, transforming the once companionable animal into a skulking, sometimes violent beast. In the young Soviet Union, such a story could have been read as a commentary about that society’s transition to Soviet socialism, which no doubt contributed to its long suppression. The novella went unpublished there until 1987.

In a presentation at the Lillian Theatre, the story is as funny as it is provocative.

At its heart is a canine so eager and feisty that you want to reach out and scratch its ears.

Dressed in drab, tattered trousers and wearing a mongrel’s snout atop his head like a cap, Joe Fria is first observed, on all fours, nosing around Moscow’s mean streets.

Hungry, unwanted and occasionally abused, he howls: “Haven’t I been kicked around enough?”

The mutt thinks it’s in paradise after a professor (Paul Dillon) invites it home to share a velvet-upholstered apartment filled with scientific specimens and glowing X-rays.

Wagging with happiness and prone to over-excitement, the dog at first wreaks playful havoc on the household. After the operation, it becomes downright frightening.

Now garbed in a tacky jacket and gaudy tie, it snarls “Why don’t you just back off?” and “You can’t talk to me like that.”

As adapted and directed by Michael Franco (who also co-adapted a popular 2000 presentation of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”), “Heart of a Dog” calls to mind such great works of social consciousness as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and Art Spiegelman’s “Maus.”

The final image leaves us to wonder what’s really more dangerous: the potential chaos of empowerment or the soul-sapping sin of domestication. And who is more humane: man? Or dog?

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‘Heart of a Dog’

Where: Lillian Theatre, 1076 N. Lillian Way, L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Nov. 21

Price: $25

Contact: (323) 960-5563

Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes