TRAVELS WITH SANDY
For one starring role in 'Annie,'
excellence is all about loyalty, training, and knowing when to bark.
By J. Wynn Rousuck
Sun Theatre Critic
March 18, 2007

The two stately blond actors are standing in a parking garage across from the theater when a minivan rolls by and slows down, the driver's mouth opening with the shock of recognition. The vehicle backs up and stops. The driver opens the doors so two little girls inside can get a look.

It's a moment they will never forget. After all, how many times do you catch a glimpse of the stars before the show?

And make no mistake about it -- these furry, four-legged beauties are the stars of Annie. Well, to be honest, one is the star; the other is merely the understudy. Or, as their roommate, driver, fellow cast member and handler, Brian Michael Hoffman, puts it, "the underdog."

A few hours later, when the curtain rings down on the matinee, the final bow will be taken not by Marissa O'Donnell, the adorable moppet who plays the title character. Instead, that honor will go to Lola, the wolfhound/Airedale terrier mix who plays Annie's dog, Sandy. And, Lola's curtain call will earn whoops and cheers in addition to applause.

Annie's engagement at the Hippodrome Theatre this week isn't just another stop along the road. It will mark the end of a two-year adventure for the dogs and their handler. The threesome shared thousands of miles and hundreds of performances, during which Hoffman was frequently poised in the wings, treats in hand, out of sight of the audience.

"I'm invisible," acknowledges Hoffman, a 1993 Baltimore School for the Arts graduate. "But they take good care of me and pay me very well to be invisible." The actor has served as the self-proclaimed "dog-boy" in touring productions of the Little Orphan Annie musical on and off since 1999.

How invisible is he? Well, despite repeated appearances in the show's ensemble -- as a bum, a milkman and a liveried servant in Daddy Warbucks' mansion -- Hoffman doesn't even show up in the Annie curtain call. He can't. He's just off stage performing his most important "invisible" task -- sending silent signals to Lola.

In Hoffman and Lola's human-to-canine language, the signals are primarily a private matter between man and dog. One example, however, is the command for "stay": Hand raised chest-height, palm outward. All the signals are noiseless, so as to not be overheard.

Man and dog have grown so close over the years that when the script calls for Sandy to walk across an empty stage, sit in the center and stare straight ahead, Hoffman, poised in the wings, turns his back to the dog. That's the only way to keep Lola from gazing at his face instead of at the audience.

Sandy has just one line in the show. The dog barks when the character of a policeman says,"All right, all you bums, outta here!"

Lola knows this cue so well that if Hoffman says the line anytime, anywhere, the dog will bark.

Annie and Sandy
Performing tricks is only part of what sets this breed of "show dog" apart. "There are so many elements of what we do that a normal dog would never experience -- lights, 2,000 people clapping, the floor vibrating from the orchestra," says Hoffman, a jovial 31-year-old whose navy polo shirt is liberally dotted with blond dog hairs. "It's seeing how the dog reacts to a little girl when 2,000 people scream when she hits that note -- 'a day aWAY.' The girl is entirely in charge of that dog."

In the current production, that girl is Marissa, a 13-year-old from Westchester, N.Y., who has been performing with Lola for the entire tour. Fifteen minutes before each performance, Hoffman brings Lola on stage to commune with Marissa. As sounds from the audience mount on the other side of the curtain at Philadelphia's Academy of Music, Lola and Marissa share some quiet time on one of the cots from the opening scene in the orphanage.

"Marissa makes my job incredibly easy. These two are like the 'dream team' of Annie and Sandy," Hoffman says.

The girl with the dark red pageboy and the dog with the shaggy champagne-colored locks are clearly buddies. Rolling on her back to have her tummy tickled, Lola registers nothing short of adoration for Marissa. Giggling, however, the Annie actress reveals that Lola sometimes passes gas during the curtain call, "and I'm afraid people think I did it."

"If that's the worst, I'll take it," says Hoffman, who worked with Marissa and Lola for an hour each day during rehearsals.

"Lola wasn't the only one being trained. I was," Marissa says.

Lola makes her entrance during the second scene, when Annie finds a stray running from the dogcatcher and sings "Tomorrow." Hoffman stands just off stage right, dressed in his raggedy bum costume and signaling to the dog. At this particular performance, the lights suddenly malfunction, flashing on and off rock concert-style. Lola raises her head and looks around. Without missing a beat, Marissa eases the dog's head back toward her face, which Lola peers into with devotion.

Lola and Mikey
Lola, who is 8, was rescued from the same animal shelter, the Connecticut Humane Society, as the original Sandy was -- a dog who starred in the musical's entire Broadway run, from 1977 to 1983, and whose obituary ran in The New York Times in 1990.

Bill Berloni, who discovered the first Sandy and went on to found William Berloni Theatrical Animals, doesn't know too much about Lola's history. A little more is known about her understudy, Mikey, who comes from a municipal Connecticut dog pound.

Mikey is 4 and could almost be Lola's twin -- except that her ears flop down, and his are semiprick ears; they stand upright with the tops folded. Mikey spent his first three years closed in a small pen, walking in circles. When he's on a leash, he still tends to circle. Hoffman is working on that. For now, Lola has proved to be such a trouper, Mikey has yet to appear on stage.

As befits a star, Lola is the alpha dog. But both are extremely affectionate. Lola leans lovingly against a visitor to the dressing room, and neither wants to miss friendly pats from human colleagues.

Lola and Mikey share Hoffman's dressing room, hotel room and bed. They travel the country in a van with a mattress and a sofa inside and the Annie logo on the back. Berloni refers to them as "ambassadors for the show."

"I think rescue animals know they're getting a second chance," says Hoffman. "It's the true Annie story. They go from rags to riches. ... They're orphans just like Annie starts out, and then by the end there are people in parking garages clamoring to get out of the van and pet them or touch them, and they're suddenly stars."

Actor and handler
Hoffman's experience with theater and animals began at age 9 when he played a raccoon in Sleeping Beauty at Liberty Showcase Theatre. His father, a salesman, occasionally appeared on stage with him. And Brian and his younger brother always had dogs -- a shepherd mix, a couple of black Labs, a springer spaniel -- at their Randallstown home.

Hoffman's Annie duties include driving the dogs to each city in which the show plays. Though the rest of the cast flies, the dogs are too large to travel in the passenger section, and Berloni feels putting them in the cargo compartment is too risky.

Caring for Lola and Mikey is a 24/7 responsibility, and sometimes the drama takes place off stage. Before Philadelphia, Annie was in Portland, Ore. After Sunday night's final performance, Hoffman, Lola, Mikey and two other company members began the 3,000-mile cross-country drive. Two hundred miles east of Portland, the van hit a patch of black ice and spun in a circle.

The humans were stunned, but no one was injured. And the dogs were unfazed. Hoffman learned later that the site of the near-accident is appropriately called Deadman Pass.

Although Hoffman came away from that incident without a scratch, he does have one permanent dog-inflicted scar -- a badge of honor that demonstrates the loyalty of a dog. A half-dozen years ago, he was in a production of Annie in San Gabriel, Calif., with a dog named Cosmo, one of five dogs he has worked with in various productions. The director invited the actress playing Annie and her family, along with Hoffman, Cosmo and Lola (who was then the understudy), to his house on Lake Arrowhead. The actress and Hoffman were swimming when the girl suggested they pretend they were drowning.

"Cosmo, who just hated water, ran in and pulled me out," says Hoffman, showing off the scar he bears on his upper left arm from Cosmo's lifeguarding. Talking about Cosmo, who died while the actor was working for Disney in Japan before this tour, brings tears to his eyes.

Emotionally engaged
In their two years on the road, Lola, Mikey and Hoffman have occasionally encountered people who fail to understand the life and duties of a stage dog.

Annie's Philadelphia engagement is the tour's second visit to that city. A year ago, Hoffman came out of the stage door with the dogs after a performance and was met by a well-dressed man holding a blank check. "He said, 'How much for your dog? ... How much for Sandy? We're taking the dog home with us tonight,'" the actor/handler recalls.

"I said, 'I'm really sorry. It's such a lovely thought, but she's got a contract and she's a little busy.'"

Then there was the time Hoffman and Lola were on a TV news show and the anchor asked whether Lola was a robot. "I thought maybe you contacted Disney and they built you an animatronic dog," he said.

"She's a real dog," Hoffman explained. If Lola's feelings were hurt, she was too polite to show it.

The tour that ends Sunday at the Hippodrome has taken Hoffman and the canine cast members from Ohio to Oregon, from California to Canada. Afterward, Lola and Mikey will return to Berloni's Connecticut home for some R&R. Hoffman will join the Broadway company of the new musical Legally Blonde, where he will be in charge of a pair of Chihuahuas.

Berloni, who has known Hoffman for more than six years, describes him as "exactly what I hope for in all the people that work for me. They are emotionally engaged. It's not just a job because we're not really animal trainers; we're caretakers for sentient beings that perform, and it's a big difference."

Hoffman has worked without dogs before. One of his longest dogless stints was the three years he spent as the lead singer in a quartet at the Tokyo Disney Sea theme park. However, he began adding dog handling to his acting responsibilities after spending quality time with Lola and another dog in a 1999 Annie tour.

His sideline as "dog-boy" has been rewarding. Besides the pleasure of working with the animals, he paid off his Syracuse University undergraduate loan, thanks to Annie.

"Does he want to be an animal handler the rest of his life? No," says Berloni. "But he loves dogs, and this is a great phase in his life right now."

At the moment, however, the thought of parting with Lola and Mikey is almost more than Hoffman can bear. Discussing this while he takes the dogs for their evening constitutional -- Mikey sporting a black leash decorated with paw prints and Lola sporting a red one decorated with stars (of course) -- the actor gets choked up.

Then he approaches the stage door with the two dogs strutting proudly in front. A crowd has gathered for the 8 p.m. show, and across the street a saxophonist plays "Tomorrow" for tips. Heads turn as Lola and Mikey stride by. No one seems to notice Hoffman. Tonight, like every other night, when the show ends, Lola will get the final curtain call and Hoffman will again be invisible. But that's OK.

"When she goes out and the audience just goes nuts, that's kind of for me, too." he says. "That's my applause.