Watch Dog, Chicago Actors Ensemble. Playwright David Gilbert made his splash as a screenwriter with the 1984 break-dancing movie Beat Street, then taught screenwriting at DePaul for nearly a decade. So it’s no surprise that Watch Dog seems a film script masquerading as live theater. The short, punchy scenes jump from location to location every few minutes (making Robert G. Smith’s immobile corporate-lobby set monumentally inappropriate), and they’re filled with quirky characters having quirky conversations about their quirks that might have some impact if underplayed and filmed in close-up. But on Smith’s football-field stage and under Drew Martin’s uncharacteristically ham-handed direction, Gilbert’s scenes dissipate into mildly diverting nonevents. This is a Mike Leigh film without depth, a John Guare play without theatrical flair.
