Metro Pulse/Backstage/The Real Inspector Hound

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What:
The Real Inspector Hound

When:
December 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20; 8 p.m.

Where:
Black Box Theatre (5213 Homberg Dr.)

Cost:
Thursdays, $5; Fridays & Saturdays: $8 students/seniors, $12 general

Stoppard comedy finds legs with Co-op

by Paige M. Travis

It's not very often that Actors Co-op cast members stretch their comedic legs, but when they do, it works like a charm.

The Real Inspector Hound, made locally famous by semi-regular productions by comedy junkies Theater Central, is Tom Stoppard's one-act spoof of English whodunnits. While Inspector Hound isn't as deeply satisfying a work as Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Arcadia, the fast-paced lark inspires quite a few laughs.

The play starts out like an industry joke: two theater reviewers sit together waiting for a mystery called Murder at Muldoon Manor to begin. (I can't imagine why reviewers from competing newspapers would sit together, but this is Stoppard's fantasy, not mine.)

Moon (Jacques DuRand) is the bitter second-string critic to full-time reviewer Higgs, who has the night off. Birdboot (Bruce Borin) is more interested in the players on the stage, particularly the actresses. The critics are deeply self-absorbed and eager to impress each other with their quick opinions of the play. Engrossed in their own little worlds, they fail to notice how truly bad the play is.

In keeping with the exaggerated drama of the traditional mystery, everyone in the play-within-a-play is wide-eyed and either shifty or histrionic: housekeeper Mrs. Drudge (Sara Schwabe); the lady of the house, Cynthia Muldoon (Amy Hubbard); their guest Felicity (Maggie Haun); and the wheelchair-bound Magnus (Donald Thorne). Enter young Simon Gascoyne (Lee Lenox), who has endeavored to seduce both Felicity and Cynthia.

The mystery gets mysterious when a radio announcer reveals that a homicidal madman is afoot near Muldoon Manor. The house's occupants are trapped with a murderer on the loose. Who is he? Is he already among them? Who is in danger? Enter Inspector Hound (Buddy Lucas), who looks like an inspector but doesn't inspire much confidence when he turns out to be just as confused as everyone else.

The biggest challenge of Inspector Hound is for the inner play's actors to imitate bad acting without actually being tedious and annoying. As the clandestine lovers, Hubbard and Lenox mimic the overblown emotions of soap opera actors, kicking every physical gesture up a notch into obvious parody. Hubbard's Lady Cynthia is demure one moment and hiking up her skirt the next with a comic relish, her makeup smeared, clownlike, from impassioned necking with Simon. Schwabe's wide-eyed exclamations of warning—"The fog!"—are as amusing for their originality as their parody of the genre.

The play-within-a-play concept gets another tweak when Birdboot, smitten with the actress who plays Cynthia, jumps from his reviewer's seat onto the stage and becomes caught up in the play's action. "You're turning it into a complete farce!" cries Moon from the wings. Borin perfectly captures the befuddled and lovestruck writer who forgets himself so completely that he doesn't realize until it's too late that he will suffer the same fatal end as the actor he's replaced. Borin's endless collection of facial expressions makes his every move (even sitting on an ottoman) hilarious.

The play's pace is swift, but not so fast that the lines are lost or the story gets trampled. DuRand gets bogged down in Stoppard's self-indulgent verbosity in the first half, but he finds his stride in the play's final minutes as he, transported into the action of Muldoon Manor, figures out exactly what's happening. As the original critics become players, two players—Lenox and Lucas—take their places in the seats. They watch passively—like blank-eyed children in front of the television—picking through Birdboot's chocolates and giving their reviews of the play in a few succinct and not-so-kind words.

Although the mystery genre Stoppard is spoofing feels dated, the simple physical humor elevates the play into contemporary significance. The Co-op's production emphasizes the physical humor without being too slapstick or ridiculous, and it doesn't dwell too much on the logic of Stoppard's story or his loquacity. His conceit—that of a theater critics' fantasy of entering the play—isn't foolproof, so, as in movies about time travel, asking too many questions can get you confused by niggling inconsistencies. But direction by Bruce Speas and the actors' expert timing keep things moving right along.