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by Anthony Shaffer, directed by Peter Fernandes

Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

May 22–October 9, 2026

Andrew Wyke: “The shortest way to a man’s heart is through humiliation”

The Shaw Festival has opened its 2026 season with Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth (1970). Like last year’s Wait Until Dark, Sleuth is so often staged and at least twice filmed that audiences will likely be comprised of a large contingent of people who already know the plot. Sleuth, in particular, relies on a ploy that may be quite effective the first time one sees it but it certainly less effective the second time. So it is in the present Shaw production which poorly manages the “surprise” of Act 2 which does not really supply the main actor in this two-hander with a strong enough opponent.

I first saw Sleuth on stage in 2012 in St. Jacobs. Since the plot has not changed since then, I will quote my previous resumé of the story: “For those who may never have seen the play before or either of the two film versions of it — one in 1972 and one in 2007 — the story is set in the study of mystery writer Andrew Wyke in a rambling manor house in Wiltshire, England. Wyke is famous for his series of St. John Lord Merridew mysteries featuring a Father Christmas-like sleuth who consistently solves murders that have stumped the police. He is a practitioner and lover of the old-fashioned style of mystery novels of Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie (though they are not mentioned) with ingenious puzzle plots set among the upper classes and deplores the rise of the police procedural that has come to take its place.

“As the play opens Wyke has just finished the dénouement of his latest mystery, Body on the Tennis Court, which he reads gleefully out loud doing all the characters’ voices. Eventually, the guest he has been expecting, the travel agent Milo Tindle, arrives. After various pleasantries Wyke asks the much younger man the surprising question whether Tindle intends to marry his wife, Marguerite. Contrary to what we might expect, Wyke shows no jealousy at al toward Tindle, with whom his wife has been having an affair. Wyke claims that divorcing Marguerite will take a burden from him, releasing him from her inane conversation and spendthrift habits. Wyke wants to make sure Tindle will marry her so that she will not return to him.

“Wyke has divined that there is a problem. Tindle has no money and Marguerite has champagne tastes. How does Tindle plan to help Marguerite live in the style to which she has grown accustomed? As it so happens, Wyke has devised a solution to Tindle’s problem. All Tindle has to do is to disguise himself as a burglar, break into Wyke’s house and steal Marguerite’s jewelry which is worth a fortune. Wyke has even chosen a fence for the jewelry in Amsterdam who will give Tindle an advantageous rate. Meanwhile, Wyke and Tindle will feign a scuffle in which Wyke is knocked unconscious and Tindle escapes. Since the jewelry is insured, Wyke will claim the insurance money and thus both will win”.

Game-playing is a major theme of the play as it was in numerous plays, novels and films of the 1960s and early ‘70s. As with any game the most exciting results arise when both parties are equally matched. Unfortunately, that is not the case at the Shaw. Patrick Galligan who plays Wyke is in his 23rd season with the Shaw and has become a master of conveying layers of meaning in dialogue. Sepher Reybod is in his second season and is very stiff in his role finding it difficult to make to make one layer of the text convincing.

When Galligan as Wyke waxes enthusiastic about how happy he is to have Tindle take Marguerite off his hands, Galligan lends curious note of menace to all he says leading us to suspect a catch long before Wyke ever suggests one. Galligan turns Wyke into a showcase for his abilities when voicing all the characters of his novel or other imagined scenarios and when gradually shading Wyke chumminess into hostility.

Reybod is best at playing Tindle as an innocent who gets caught up in Wyke’s get-rich-quick scheme, but he needs to give Tindle more swagger and suspicion. Tindle’s final acceptance of Wyke’s plan seems like a leap rather than a logical development. Later on, Reybod needs to give Tindle a greater sense of menace, since, as it is, Galligan seems to do all the acting for both of them.

It is a real pleasure to be back in the Court House Theatre again. The last show presented there was in 2017. The Court House Theatre was famous for seating the audience on three sides of a small stage. There was such immediacy that those seated on the aisles might feel a character’s dress brush against them when the actor passed by. Those near the stage could read the letters that a character has just set down on a desk. However, in the interest of accessibility the Festival has done away with the thrust stage and now has all rows of seats facing a stage that runs the width of the auditorium.

Set designer Sim Suzer has fully taken up the theme of game-playing. The central floor-cloth looks like a chess board with one corner drooping over the side of the stage. The top of the coffee-table on the floor-cloth also has a checkerboard pattern. A dartboard and a billiard set decorate the walls and board games are packed into the lower tier of the coffee-table and elsewhere. Joyce Padua’s idea of garbing the two characters in suits of a similar cut does not quite work since neither colour is anything one would encounter in sports or in board-games.

For the “surprise” of Act 2, the Shaw Festival has turned to the latest technology, something that certainly would not have been available in 1970. The result calls attention to itself which is just the opposite of what is desirable. Peter Fernandes’ direction which tries to minimize our notice of the effect , in fact, only draws our attention to it.

In 2012 for Drayton Entertainment, director Marti Maraden was able to lend this thriller greater meaning by emphasizing the interplay between in reality and illusion in the text. She was able to do this by underlining the huge role that fantasy plays in the lives of both Wyke and Tindle. Peter Fernandes gives us a straightforward view of the plot but no more and, aside from Galligan’s performance, no compelling reason to revisit such a familiar work.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Sepher Reybod as Tindle and Patrick Galligan as Wyke; Patrick Galligan as Wyke and Sepher Reybod as Tindle; Patrick Galligan as Wyke and Sepher Reybod as Tindle. © 2026 David Cooper.

For tickets visit: www.shawfest.com