Sponsored by RSPCA
Lincoln Room, Underbello, Leeds. 2pm – 4pm (45 minutes)
In it’s 6th sell-out year, The Sausage Dog seems to go from strength to strength.
Originally gaining fame on youtube with his antics of going up and down stairs, The Sausage Dog is now a theatre staple. And in this show you can see why.
The Sausage Dog is absolutely, stunningly hilarious for reasons that have been widely documented – but for those people that have been living in a wifi-less kennel for the last 6 years here is the science: The combination of their ridiculous tiny legs, that move so fast to propel their disproportionately long body, alongside their stern, concentrated face is a marvel of evolutionary humour that God has not matched since The Llama. Truly wonderful. No surprise then that The Sausage Dog is now prescribed on the NHS to treat depression, and is a staple of psyche wards the world over.
However, having overdosed on Sausage Dog on the internet over the last 2 years, I did find myself tiring by the end of this 2 hour show, especially as the dog does nothing other than sit on stage, and move about every so often. Indeed, I must admit I had a couple of moments where the veil was lifted from my eyes, and I thought to myself “It’s… just a sausage dog. What’s so special about that? Why are tickets £23 a pop? This is a rip off!”
However, usually at that moment The Sausage Dog would do something like walk a little bit to the left or to the right and I would lose my critical distance and be laughing uncontrollably again, with a volume and anger that usually scares people, but in this show fits right in.
The only negative point – that I learnt afterwards – is that 470 Sausage Dogs have died since the first performance, and that they often die from overwork – too much walking and climbing up and down stairs – a fact that left a bad taste in this reviewers mouth, that was until he saw The Sausage Dog outside the venue and all his cares melted away and everything was fine with the world.
