The Real Inspector Hound (1975)
by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Malcolm Saunders
Performances: 14th & 15th March 1975, Theatre
Contents
Introduction
Text about the play
Cast
- Moon - Terry Barden
- Birdboot - John Davies
- Mrs Drudge - Valerie Westbey
- Simon - John Kennedy
- Felicity - Lynfa Moses
- Cynthia - Ruth Shettle
- Magnus - Donald North
- Inspector Hound - Bernie Bullbrook
Crew
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- Lighting Design - Designer Name
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Reviews
"Two critics and a tiger2
Not content with 12 full productions for the 1974/75 season, the SLTC last week made a it baker's dozen by squeezing in two performances of TOm Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound", a short play with enough will and vigour for two full-length comedies from a less resourceful pen.
Pirandello is the name most famously associated with the idea of setting off stage reality against external reality. Stoppard, pursuing it in light-hearted vein, has hit on the device of involving two critics, Moon the eternal deputy and his vain friend Birdboot, in the play they are supposed to be assessing. But they find they have a tiger by the tail, and I must take their lesson to heart whenever I find myself tempted to o'erleap the footlights to influence the course of events.
Malcolm Saunders' production sited the critics up-stage, facing the auditorium, with the painted figures of their own fellow on-lookers behind them, like those immobile crowd scenes of early cartoons. Thus they were seeing the action back to front, since the characters were playing to us and not them, with the furniture arranged accordingly.
The production nicely caught the play's vein of double parody, in which words usually italicized as stage directions become actual dialogue, and critical comments are submerged in hectic actions.
Gallery
Reminiscences and Anecdotes
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See Also
The Real Inspector Hound (2000)
References
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