✭✭✭✭✭ / ✭✭✭✩✩

Tom Stoppard / Peter Shaffer, directed by Jim Warren

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

September 20, 2008

Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) is one of the finest one-act comedies of the 20th century--Peter Shaffer’s farce Black Comedy (1965), not so much.  Jim Warren, who directs both as a double bill for Soulpepper, gets about as much as there is from each, but the slapstick comedy in Shaffer comes off as repetitive and weak after the mind-bending wit in Stoppard.

The main characters in Hound are two egotistical theatre critics (“Is there any other kind?”).  Moon (Oliver Dennis) is tired of being his paper’s second-string critic, while Birdboot (Michael Simpson), though loudly moral, fantasizes about the actresses on stage.  The play they critique is Stoppard’s hilarious satire of hoary whodunits like The Mousetrap.  In a kind of theatrical Moebius strip, both critics eventually find themselves on stage taking part in the action.  Everything about the production, the deliberately tacky design, the stylized acting of the players, the eerie transition to the surreal are absolutely perfect.  Simpson’s sudden unleashing of his lascivious urges and Dennis’s increasing befuddlement are priceless.

In Comedy, Shaffer has only trick up his sleeve.  When the characters think their lights are on, the stage is dark and vice versa.  Thus, when Carol (Caroline Cave) blows out a fuse and plunges her world into darkness, the stage lights blaze up and we see her and her artist fiancé Brindsley (Mike Shara) groping about in the light.  Otherwise, the plot is a conventional romantic farce dependent upon who is where when, except here no multiple doors are needed since the bright darkness “hides” everything.  While Shara shows an unexpected flair for physical comedy, Cave, who hits just the right note in Hound, tries too hard.  Corrine Koslo as a teetotaller on her first drinking binge and Oliver Dennis as a fey antiques dealer are the characters we remember.  Still, an hour of people falling down and bumping into things soon outstays its welcome.  Nevertheless, don’t miss Hound  It’s the funniest play this year and alone worth the price of admission.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008 08-28.

Photo: Caroline Cave, William Webster and Corrine Koslo.