Genre: Comedy
Written by: Bert V. Royal
Directed by: Susan W. Lovell
Performed by: Michael Gladis, Karen DiConcetto, Tate Ellington, Jay Sullivan, Benjamin Schrader, Bridget Barkan, Stelianie Tekmitchov, Melissa Picarello.
Running time: One hour, 40 minutes

While suburban, middle-class childhoods tend to shimmy with trauma in plays (usually written, directed and performed by products of that environment for an audience of peers), Dog Sees God doesn't feel like the same old high-school-warfare schlock. The characters—the Peanuts gang, teenage and reckless—are both genuinely sympathetic and unquestionably cruel. Growing more hysterical—and more harrowing—as it flows to an inevitable, uncomfortable end, this taut comedy manages to make tired clichés about stoners and popular homecoming airheads funny and endearing. Benjamin Schrader is stunning as a conflicted gay kid in what could have been a boilerplate role and Karen DiConcetto's riff on blockhead performance art is one of the best scenes in the show. Dog Sees God is one of the many entries in this year's Fringe that angle to be the next Urinetown by being the next Avenue Q. Here's to hoping that there are numerous Broadway bankrollers out there with traumatic, middle-class suburban childhoods in their pasts. —Will Doig

• Where: SoHo Playhouse
• When: Sat, Aug 14 at 5:30 p.m.; Wed, Aug 18 at 10:15 p.m.; Sun, Aug 22 at noon; Thu, Aug 26 at 3 p.m.; Sat, Aug 28 at 7:45 p.m.