“Heart of a Dog is a searing testimony to the importance of individual freedom in a totalitarian society.... [Robert Astle] captures the painful absurdities and cruel comedy of life in the U.S.S.R. with an understated but emotionally powerful performance.”

— The Edmonton Sun

“A shabby figure is flung unceremoniously onto the stage, dander up and suitcases flying. That's the start of it. It's clear that this tatty refugee has a major grievance. 'I will get my justice,' he declares. And he launches into a succession of dark, strangely inconclusive stories, which he substantiates and embellishes by pawing through his dirt-filled cases for treasures.

Robert Astle's highly original one-man show is a dog's-eye view of Russia the Rational based on Mikhail Bulgakov's corrosive (and long proscribed) 1925 satire Heart of a Dog. What emerges, in fits and starts, snarls and growls, is a canine chronicle of privations and bureacratic indignities: slammed doors, cold winters, futile paperwork, and abuses of power. Funny, piquant, and in flavor and sensibility altogether unlike anything else to be seen in these parts.”

— The Edmonton Journal

“So persuasive was Robert Astle's performance of a dog in Heart of a Dog that I found myself walking along the street outside the Poor Alex Theatre in a complete dog mind-set: entranced by dogs tied to street posts, dogs investigating garbage and each other's tails, dogs trotting along on leashes, inhaling the aromas of the sidewalk. The play, adapted freely and imaginatively by Edmonton actor Astle along with Belgians Didier Caffonnette and Agnes Limbos from Mikhail Bulgakov's 1925 allegorical satire, is an exercise in apocalyptic black humour. The piece is remarkably sure-handed: wickedly funny and political in a sophisticated sense, not by declaiming or denouncing, but by exposing the abuses of power.”

— The Globe & Mail

“The important thing about the central character in this brilliant one-man performance, adapted from Bulgakov's 1925 novel, is his perspective on the society of which he is no longer a part. From Stalinist Soviet Union to Tory Britain, his predicament is instantly and universally recognisable.”

— The Glasgow Herald