Dog Act by New York Mac Wellman-school playwright Liz Duffy Adams is a first on many fronts – a Southern California premiere, San Diego troupe Moxie Theatre’s first show of their first season, lead actress Liv Kellgren’s first main stage role where she sings and dances, maybe Diversionary Theatre’s first non-gay play and the first post-apocalyptic work of theater I’ve seen that has a man who thinks he’s a dog but barks like a human and aspires to be a vaudevillian.

Set in a future where civilization has been destroyed by nuclear war and the seasons change without notice by the sudden shift of the polar axis, Rozetta Stone (Kellgren) and Dog (Jason Connors) are the sole surviving members of a traveling vaudeville show trying to get to a gig in China via the Pacific Northwest – never mind they have no means of crossing the ocean with their cart of props, gewgaws and mangled musical instruments, held up by an assorted old tires. Rozetta and Dog’s need for each other is never spoken, or barked, out loud, but they do rely on one another to survive, singing their songs and dreaming of better days in the elusive China (because we all need a goal and a dream at the end of the world).

The two travelers meet up with another pair of performers – the truth-sayer Vera Similitude (the larger-than-life Slyvia Combs M’Lafi Thompson) and teenage Jo-Jo the Bald Faced Liar (the energetic but sensual Jo Anne Glover), a singing and story-telling pair with their own agenda for survival -- which includes the hunting and cooking of Squish: part Squirrel, part fish. The four decide to team up, although Vera has the goods on Dog’s past and why he self-demoted from human to beast, and also has a plan to murder Rozetta.

Hot on their tracks are two foul-mouthed scavengers part Mad Max, part Penn and Teller and part bad Shakespeare – aptly named Coke and Bud (the eerie Matthew Scott and the vivacious Brandon Walker). They had caught Jo-Jo in a trap and lost her – she also stole their weapons, so they want some revenge.

Act Two is a take on the play-within-a-play, where the vaudevillians rehearse their morality show that starts with Adam and Eve, has a song, “I Got the Human Blues,” in the middle, and ends with corporate greed and nuclear war-mongering.

Language is the key to Dog Act, jumping off from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange where the vernacular of the future is changed, but still the same. There are many tongue-twisting sentences that the cast handles marvelously, especially Kellgren’s Rozetta (“this sucks like the succubus sucks”) and Glover’s Jo-Jo, who speechifies long stories in breathless, loud, matter-of-fact monologues. There’s also the issue of kindness and affection – there is none in this world, and whenever one character tries to show feelings for the other, it is quickly negated and shunned; this is an existence where love is alien and a true smile comes from a dinner of cooked Squish and found berries.

A bold and smart play for a theatre company’s first production, Moxie gives San Diego theater what is desperately needs: something that takes a chance. Moxie is homeless, hoping to open a space in North County’s Encinitas. Right now, their first season will be presented at Hillcrest’s Diversionary Theater and downtown’s Lyceum Space.