(Lenox, MA) – Picture if you will a foggy and looming estate in Essex England with a mysterious past. A dead body, a dangerous murderer on the loose, and two second-string theater critics each suffering from existential crises. Enter The Real Inspector Hound, one of Tom Stoppard’s most hilarious and satirical plays, coming to Shakespeare & Company this fall! Following last autumn’s riotously funny The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Real Inspector Hound promises another delicious dose of slapstick humor and postmodern hilarity.
“It all fits together with a sort of demented clockwork precision.”
- British theatre scholar John Russell Taylor
Ticket details: The Real Inspector Hound plays in the Elayne P. Bernstein theatre from September 18 through November 7. Performances run at 7:30 p.m. in the evenings and 2:00 p.m. in the afternoons. Tickets range from $12 to $48. To view a complete schedule, receive a brochure, or inquire about discounts (such as our 40% Berkshire Resident Discount, Senior Discount, or Youth Rush Tickets), please call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit www.shakespeare.org. For customized group visits – which may include artist talkbacks, tours, and catered events – contact the Group Sales office at (413) 637-1199, ext. 132.
Written sixteen years after the smashing success of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound takes self-aware humor to new heights by dismantling the murder mystery genre. No cliché is safe in this spot-on parody, just like the eccentric characters who meet in Hound’s curiously isolated Muldoon Manor where a dead body is found, and soon after a radio report announces a mad man is on the loose. Two theatre critics arrive on the scene to review a play but find themselves caught up within the murder-mystery play with the on-stage actors. Chaos ensues until, through a series of hilarious events the REAL Inspector Hound arrives at the crime scene…or does he? From the handsome stranger, to the beautiful widower, to the bumbling detective who (quite literally) doesn’t have a clue, Stoppard skewers every who-dun-it convention with wicked skill and delight.
Tom Stoppard's Real Inspector Hound blends modern comedy with traditional mystery, and adds a dose of satire.
Even the theater critics aren’t safe (optimistically, Shakespeare & Company is still inviting the press anyway), as Stoppard weaves their absurd commentary into the production itself. Find out what happens when the line between spectator and performer vanishes in Hound’s devilish play-within-a-play structure!
The Real Inspector Hound is helmed by long time Company actor and director Jonathan Croy, whose affinity for Stoppard’s work was seen most recently in his hilariously deadpan portrayal of playwright Sandor Turai in Rough Crossing, the unsinkable hit of 2007.
Croy, who (along with The Real Inspector Hound cast member Josh McCabe and company actor Ryan Winkles) had audiences in stitches this past fall with his performance in The Hound of the Baskervilles, is thrilled at the opportunity to bring Stoppard to Shakespeare & Company once again.
“This is a singularly brilliant play conceived by a singularly brilliant playwright,” notes Croy. “One of the things I love about it is that it really is, in many ways, just a silly parody—but it’s a silly parody infused with genius on every level. On one hand it’s a send-up of whodunits, but on the other hand it’s really about the nature of existence.”
Indeed, hidden between the antics of the slightly deranged characters and amusingly bombastic critics rest thought-provoking examinations of fate, free will, and the nature of performance. It’s the sort of profound yet approachable humor found in Stoppard’s other acclaimed works, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Funny and existential—The Real Inspector Hound promises an evening of brain twisting comedy across the moors, and time, and into an off-season treat for those of us in the Berkshires.
