Review: The Real Inspector Hound

When a couple of stuffy critics come to watch a shambles of a whodunnit, they soon find themselves entangled in a melodrama and predictably, everything gets confusing and self-referential.

Stoppard’s fizzing English wit and sharp, whimsical exchanges were always going to lend themselves well to a bit of Oxonion theatre. With a piece lasting just under an hour, needing no change of set and with a play-within-play plot where the worse the acting becomes the better the whole thing becomes – what could possibly go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong?

Not  much did. Major Muldoon’s flimsy wooden wheelchair did collapse mid-exit, leaving a panting Inspector Hound to drag him from the stage amidst a trail of prop debris. The Major (Dugald Young) was forced to temporarily regain the use of his legs in order to drag in a shiny replacement and Inspector Hound (Peter Huhne) looked a bit sweaty on his return, but things soon calmed down again.

If there’s any play in which you can get away with a few disabled-access prop gaffs, this is probably it. In a self-conscious parody of both theatre and its critics, the whole mishap probably added rather than substracted from the drama.

Stoppard’s droll English mannerisms might not seem particularly demanding for Oxford students to imitate, but there was a gap between flamboyant over-acting and mild realism that needed to be navigated for the whole thing to work. The cast balanced it well.

Theatre critics Ed Barr-Sim and Sam Carter (Moon and Birdboot) appeared ridiculous enough to be laughed at but natural enough to distinguish themselves from the rest of the parody. The pace dropped slightly in the closing scene (perhaps a hangover from the shattered wheelchair?) and a few lines looked close to being sunk, but no one flinched too much.

Phoebe Hames managed a thoroughly comic and eerily creaky depiction of an old Essex housemaid. Martha Ellis Leach (Felicity) and Lauren Hyett (Lady Muldoon) were so convincing that you’d never have guessed they were good actresses. And hats off to the non-speaking corpse who managed to sweat it out on the floor for nearly an hour.

Refreshing to see a production that’s short, neat, strongly cast and almost smooth, whilst shying away from taking itself too seriously.