"Dog's Life" Is the Good Life for RSC's Canine Star
Dita and Andrew Melville play one of their comic scenes in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."
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3/18/2005
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
Getting the royal treatment and getting treated like a dog is the same thing for one star cast member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, now in residence at Davidson College.
Dita “The Diva” Dog, who plays Crabb in the RSC’s production The Two Gentlemen of Verona, has star-quality, canine accommodations backstage at the Duke Family Performance Hall. She is also enjoying top-dog, home-away-from-home lodgings with a prominently animal-loving Davidson family. At her beck and call 24/7 are the services of this small Southern town’s beloved veterinarian. And Dita’s doggie schedule of community outreach personal appearances for local schoolchildren rivals the jam-packed professional calendars of the 62-member cast and crew.
Star of stage and screens both large and small, Dita reactivated her British canine passport (really) for this tour of duty in the United States. Having already worked recent gigs in Germany and Europe, she is up-to-date on all her international travel inoculations -- though she had to fly into the Raleigh-Durham airport rather than Charlotte-Douglas International, due to animal customs limitations at the latter facility.
The Shakespearean role of Crabb is a departure for Dita, who is used to the kind of pop-culture roles she has performed in movies like 102 Dalmatians, Gladiator, and Thomas and the Magic Railway; in television series like Eastenders, The Fugitives, and Smack the Pony; and in commercials for MasterCard, Toyota, and Dyson vacuum cleaners (presumably the Dyson 07 “Animal” model).
Dita has been a big hit with students at Davidson Elementary School.
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A self-professed mutt resembling the slaphappy showbiz dog “Benji” of American cinematic renown, Dita’s personality is quite a departure from the dog who plays Crabb on tour in the British Isles, said Sue Darley, Dita’s handler and travelling companion. The canine thespian who tours in Britain is a much calmer dog named Ria, a Lurcher—whose international travel papers, unfortunately for her curriculum vitae, were not as up-to-date as Dita’s. Lurchers, with their mix of greyhound and various herder bloodlines, are country dogs bred for hunting. Dita’s streetwise genealogy is geared more toward the limelight, said Darley, and while her Crabb character does not have any dramatic lines to deliver per se, her unique personality definitely shines through.
“Ria is so laidback she could fall over,” Darley says. “She’s brilliant as Crabb. This part was made for Ria. The dog is ‘straight guy’ to Andrew Melville’s Lance (a lively manservant). The dialogue calls for this ‘miserable dog….’ Dita is going to be a little bit more of a perky character on the stage. Dita doesn’t do miserable.”
She certainly doesn’t risk actually being miserable, with a daily routine that includes all the amenities of her London home, said Darley—including a tea kettle for use by any stray human guests who may follow Darley in….
In Davidson, both college and town are providing Dita the quality of life to which she has become accustomed, for example, on the set of 102 Dalmations, Darley said, “where the dogs were very much the stars of the show and were treated as such.”
When not rehearsing, performing, or giving “acting lessons” at Davidson Elementary School, Dita is lodging with Amy Diamond, a Davidson Elementary teacher, and her husband Robert Whitton, longtime visiting professor of mathematics at the college. Town veterinarian Dick Hay (a Davidson alumnus) and his staff at Total Bond Veterinary Clinic stand ready to provide for any medical needs that might arise, as well as taking care of travel-related examinations and passport paperwork. (Great Britain, as an island nation only recently more closely linked physically to the Continent and beyond by the Chunnel and the generally increased facility of global travel, has particularly stringent rabies vaccination and other health requirements.)
Dita conducts an interview with members of the fan club.
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Darley has worked with show dogs -- and showbiz dogs -- her entire professional life, and said that at this point she worries as much about Dita’s foster parents in London as much as she does about Dita during extended acting tours.
“These three weeks that we’re in Davidson will be hard for them (the humans),” she said. “These dogs love what they’re doing…. You just have to keep half an eye out on Dita, because she can be a bit cheeky.”
Dita’s final performances in The Two Gentlemen of Verona will be Saturday evening, March 19, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday afternoon, March 20, at 1:30 p.m. Same-day discount tickets may be available an hour before show time at the Alvarez College Union box office.
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its establishment in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Davidson is engaged in “Let Learning Be Cherished,” a $250 million campaign in support of student financial assistance, academic resources, and community life.
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