The Real Inspector Hound: Alma Tavern

Friday 4th July 2008

This is a Crackerjack review of The Real Inspector Hound . Do you agree? Rate and review this event.

Crackerjack rating: 7 / 10.

It’s four decades since Tom Stoppard wrote his satirical “play within a play”, but it remains as entertaining as ever and Bristol theatre group Angleterre Productions had great fun hamming it up for the appreciative Alma Tavern audience.

The play is a parody of the formulaic Agatha Christie-style whodunnit.
There’s every cliché going – a remote manor house surrounded by swamps; a madman on the loose; strangers in obvious disguise; everyone threatening to kill each other.

It opens ordinarily enough with two theatre critics, one uptight and embittered, the other a pompous philanderer, settling down to review a play.

But the body lying in open view on stage, while everyone steps around it, is the first clue to the insanity that’s about to unfold.

Tom Stoppard brilliantly blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, and soon the critics themselves are drawn into the action on stage with hilarious and unexpected results.

The cast threw themselves into the farce with gusto, overacting like mad, and providing some wonderful cameos – including the creaky Mrs Drudge (Anna Charlett), the womanising bon viveur Birdboot (Simon Shorrock) and a thoroughly mad Magnus Muldoon (Ben Pavord), but all were strong, although the biggest applause came for the body (Ross Geoghegan).

A great romp and deserved sell-out.

Susie Weldon

This is a Crackerjack review of The Real Inspector Hound . Do you agree? Rate and review this event.