THE CAST OF “THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND” performs at Theater at Monmouth.
Perhaps Tom Stoppard referred to a checklist while writing his hyperbolic satire “The Real Inspector Hound” to be sure the play contains all the tropes of a British mystery. Remote English manor house a la Manderley? Check. A bumbling detective? Check. Smarmy upper class gits drinking too much gin? Change the gin to whiskey and check. Dead body? One mustn’t forget the dead body that lies on the floor throughout the entire play bringing new meaning to the phrase, “a plot is afoot” as various characters trip over and move furniture around it, er, him. Like any good detective story, there are red herrings and in this case, the body, the murder, nay the entire mystery is a red herring. “The Real Inspector Hound” is theatre absurd at its modern best and the repertory troupe at Theater at Monmouth has cooked up a cracking good production.
Stoppard doesn’t limit himself to satirizing Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock. He also gives the world his low opinion of theater reviewers: two critics watch the whodunit unfold and offer the audience their plot predictions and pompous estimations by their powerful pens. To give more details of the story would spoil it. Suffice to say, clever and confounding twists and repeated scenes and dialogue turn the whole thing hilariously inside out. This is the playwright who gave the world “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” after all. One can try to figure out what is going to happen but it doesn’t matter so much what the characters are doing as what they are saying. Yet it doesn’t matter what the critics are saying as no one should listen to them anyway.
This reviewer, despite Stoppard’s maligning of the profession, thoroughly enjoyed Matthew Arbour’s direction of the play. Based on seeng other performances this season, the cast consists of most of the company’s best actors: Bill Van Horn and Mark S. Cartier are the two critics Birdboot and Moon, who talk and talk and never listen to each other lest it is to gather harmful gossip for one upmanship. Van Horn is deliciously disagreeable as the pub crawling philandering cad and Cartier crisply captures the self important air of the erudite reviewer. Jordan Coughtry, in a style reminiscent of Dan Stevens – former cause célèbre of Downton Abbey — plays a silver-spooned boy toy with a fitting nasal plummy Eton accent. Janis Stevens, who was a standout as queen mum Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, plays the opposite end of the social strata as the wry servant who sees all. Andy Blaustein punches up the goofiness to great effect as does Michael Dix Thomas in his role as Major Magnus Muldoon. Poor Alan Estes must get some credit as the dead body for it cannot be easy to spend the 70 or so minutes the play runs (there is no intermission) on the floor still as a corpse. In contrast the one to watch for, as Birdboot and Moon tell us – is the vivacious Nisi Sturgis as breezy Cynthia Muldoon. All, save Estes, deliver dialogue in the rapid witty style indicative of both Stoppard and the mousetrap screenplays he is riffing on.
Unlike the simple and spare sets of the Shakespeare plays TAM is running, the scenic design for “The Real Inspector Hound” is replete with all the accoutrements of a manor home, including damask upholstered chairs and even a suit of armor. The costumes and a working radio adds to the late 1930s atmosphere, the heyday of gothic mystery films. A clever sound design adds verity to a key gotcha moment.
The entire farce is a perfect blend of great writing, fine comedic acting, and a wonderful setting at Cumston Hall. Running a brisk 70 minutes,”The Real Inspector Hound” is a good choice for a weekday viewing if work beckons the next day. For more information about this and other plays at Theater at Monmouth, visit http://theateratmonmouth.o rg.
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