There aren't many instances that excuse an audience member crinkling paper during a live theater event. But the unwrapping of tissue qualifies, particularly when Kathleen Chalfant is the one sending you reaching for the Kleenex.

And send you Chalfant will. So let these words serve as a friendly warning to anyone who braves "Red Dog Howls" at El Portal Theatre: Use the intermission to get those hankies ready. Otherwise, please unwrap quietly.

Chalfant and playwright Alexander Dinelaris prepare us for "Red Dog's" entrails-twisting finale both overtly and backhandedly. Even though we're promised a tale of woe, there's also a certain amount of cutesy banter between narrator Michael Kiriakos (played by Matthew Rauch) and his wife, Gabriella (Darcie Siciliano), that kicks off "Red Dog."

Michael talks. A lot. About his wife, his heritage, his quest for an identity and about Vartouhi Afratian (Chalfant), the 91-year-old grandmother Michael didn't know was 1) still alive or 2) of Armenian descent. His roots, or so he thought, were Greek.

Michael grew up without a mother. So did his recently deceased father. Searching through his late father's effects, Michael stumbles upon a box of letters his dad asks him to burn unopened. Michael doesn't peek, but he copies down the return address and tracks down the grandmother who walked out when his father was barely out of diapers.

Our hero wants explanations. Grandmother Vartouhi decides instead to both feed and educate him. Slowly. As he visits Vartouhi's brownstone (tenderly designed by Tom Buderwitz), a rift is developing between Michael and Gabriella, just as their firstborn child is getting ready to make an appearance.

Act 1 ends in a double dose of bloodshed (one predictable). And, given the nature of Granny's revelation, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Given the over-talkiness of Rauch's Michael, "Red Dog Howls" feels at times like a cross between a play and a short biography. The 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks will come to bear both on Vartouhi's history and - by extension - on Michael's future. Michael, her grandmother informs him, must be strong, a point she drives home via an arm-wrestling bout.

Even with a mass tragedy threatening to overshadow his play, director Michael Peretzian keeps his tale personal and intimate, confining the tale to that of a family. Composer/musician Ara Dabandjian's music is a nice enhancement.

Asked to shoulder much of the play's narrative and conscience - a bit too heavy-handedly at times - Rauch is consistently strong. The part calls for a man so bottled up and at sea that his cop-out cry, "I don't know who I am," is actually apt. From Rauch, we buy it. Siciliano brings a nice sizzle to an otherwise thankless role: the wife who urges, forgives and says "I love you" all at the right moments.

And then there's Kathleen Chalfant.

Way back in 1999, we watched her stare down ovarian cancer in Margaret Edson's "Wit." (And, with apologies to the HBO film's Emma Thompson, this was Chalfant's part).

Written entirely for tragic purposes, the "Red Dog" role is tougher. Her hair tufted, her garb funereal black, her accented delivery spot-on for humor and pathos, Chalfant leads us around the complicated psyche of a reluctant survivor without once asking for compassion - Michael's or the audience's. The role - indeed the play - is unimaginable without her.

But bring a hankie. You'll need it.

Evan Henerson (818) 713-3651, evan.henerson@dailynews.com