[In the following review, Hofler offers a negative assessment of The Dog Problem.]

The bruised male egos and themes of compromised manhood of David Rabe's best plays are all on display in his latest, The Dog Problem. This time out he wraps them in the format of an Italian mob comedy, a not-very-high concept he probably came up with before The Sopranos but not before we all saw Married to the Mob or Prizzi's Honor. What Rabe is doing in hit-man territory with The Dog Problem is anybody's guess.

As always in Rabe's world, dog is God spelled backward, and neither God nor the dog have to deal with the moral confusions besetting man. Once again, the men in Rabe's play are having real problems being men.

Joey (David Wike) is out to avenge the sexual humiliation of his sister, Teresa (Andrea Gabriel), whose one-night stand with Ray (Larry Clarke) culminated with his paying too much attention to his dog at the moment of climax. Ray's best friend Ronnie (Joe Pacheco) owes Joey money, so he sets up Ray so Joey can inflict punishment.

Unfortunately, Ray isn't appropriately groveling during his ordeal with a couple of garbage cans, so someone must die—and Joey has an uncle in the mob, Malvolio (Victor Argo), who's just the man for the job.

Uncle Malvolio gives Ray a choice: It's either him or his voyeur dog. Smart guy Ray chooses the dog.

Pet people should avoid The Dog Problem. The human body count on any movie screen can populate a small office building, but kill a dog—Rabe observes the ancient Greeks' legit commandment by shooting the animal offstage—and half the audience is ready to bail. Intermission talk was appropriately downbeat, if not outraged, at the Atlantic Theater.

In typical Rabe fashion, the men in The Dog Problem have lost their moral code, except for the Sicilian thing about honor and betrayal. But now, even aging Uncle Mal is having his doubts, since his prostate trouble has made him contemplate the Almighty and Depends, if not in that order.

Ray and Ronnie, a couple of Jewish single guys, don't even have some twisted Mob ethos to comfort them. “We were like, you know, a couple of guys in a beer commercial,” Ray says. “We were like a couple of male models—these male models pretending something. Posing. We were in a pose—an advertisement so that we were involved in nothing but an exchange of goods. You know. Commodities. The marketplace. It was narcissism, you know. Nothing more.”

Their indictments populate The Dog Problem like so many comedy land mines for director Scott Ellis and his accomplished cast to jump around. The absurdity of Ray's situation pushes the company into appropriately broad performances and fast-paced deliveries—with antic, sitcomish music to match—but Rabe never lets the action speak for itself, as it must in comedy.

He also mistakes amusing situations with meaningless confusion onstage, as when Teresa must explain why she's banging the cookie jars in the middle of the night.

In act two, Ray escapes the bar and mob cultures in one swoop, but marriage to Teresa is equally bankrupt and he's soon blotto on Jack Daniels. “We didn't get started so well,” Teresa says, “your dog being killed all of a sudden.” Yes, Mafia people keep saying the damnedest things.