Show titles (double bill): The Real Inspector Hound, Black Comedy

Authors: Tom Stoppard (Inspector Hound), Peter Shaffer (Black Comedy)

Director: Jim Warren

Principle Actors: Caroline Cave, Oliver Dennis, C. David Johnson, Corrine Koslo, Mike Shara, Michael Simpson, William Webster, Sarah Wilson

Where: Soulpepper Theatre Company

Venue: Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto

Run: August 20-September 27

The Real Inspector Hound - 5 Stars

Black Comedy – 3.5 stars

Reviewed By: Miriam Cross (Toronto Correspondent – Canada)

One deals with a literal blackout, while the other deals with a more figurative darkness – a murder plot, a mystery disappearance, and an isolated manor in ‘treacherous’ marshland. Nevertheless, in terms of entertainment value, Soulpepper’s hit double bill of British farces – murder mystery takeoff The Real Inspector Hound and the appropriately titled Black Comedy – makes for an evening of pure light fun.

The Real Inspector Hound (1968) parodies both British murder mystery plays and the theatre critics who invest too much of their lives reviewing them. The play-within-a-play revolves around the betrayals, deceptions, and passionate love affairs raging in Muldoon Manor in the remote countryside, coinciding with the escape of a madman who, we are conveniently informed by radio broadcasts, is now in the vicinity of Muldoon Manor, which, due to the bleak weather, is cut off from civilization. The drama is interspersed with the sparring and bantering of two theatre critics watching the performance; Moon and Birdboot. Moon worries about two contemporaries competing for his job; Birdboot angrily rebuffs Moon’s accusations of adultery, but once the pretty young actresses appear onstage, his demeanour suggests otherwise. Overtly foreboding music and exposition, as well as the body wedged under the sofa in Lady Muldoon’s drawing room, indicate that a murder is bound to occur…but the effect is not quite what we expect.

Black Comedy (1965) takes its title most literally, situating its characters in a blackout while the audience watches in perfect light. Brindsley and his fiancée Carol, anxious to make a good impression on the girl’s father and anticipating a visit by a wealthy art collector, filch their neighbour Harold’s furniture while he’s away for the weekend to sharpen up their home. Before anyone can arrive a fuse blows out, and the two must contend with the arrival of her father, a frightened elderly neighbour, Harold, the art collector, and unfortunately for Brindsley, his conniving ex-girlfriend.

Laugh-out-loud moments abound in both productions. Black Comedy favours physical comedy; at one point, Brindsley is forced to return each piece of Harold’s furniture to his house (including the piece his future father-in-law is currently sitting on) and retrieve their own pieces under cover of darkness, while sidestepping the guests, other objects, and his wife. Meanwhile, Hound rolls out every murder-mystery cliché in the book, from the mysterious phone calls to the murky, isolated manor (emphasized by an overzealous fog machine) to the expository police updates that happen to begin every time a character switches on the radio. The two comedies further engage the audience by absorbing them into the fabric of the play: in Hound we assume the role of audience for the play-within-a-play, with the added advantage of eavesdropping on a couple of bickering critics; in Black Comedy our presence informs the lighting effects. (And on the night I saw the play, this crossover gained another dimension when a couple cell phones rang in the audience. Moon, in perfect character, glared pointedly in response.)

Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of Hound and Black Comedy highlights the latter’s flaws. As the action progresses in Hound, Moon’s and Birdboot’s histories, dialogues, and personalities gradually lose their distinction from the performance they’re watching until they eventually become entangled in the play itself. Conversely, the collision of characters in Black Comedy devolves into a ridiculous mess with a predictable outcome.

Both plays share the same cast, which also goes to highlight Black Comedy’s weaknesses. While both contain stock characters (the two-timing young man, the scorned girlfriend, the surprise guest), the actors in Black Comedy are reduced to playing the same note over and over towards the end. Though the characters in Hound are just as one-sided, their passionate grievances and melodramatic dialogue is more fun to watch. Caroline Cave and Sarah Wilson bicker amusingly as Lady Muldoon and her jealous friend Felicity in Hound, but tend to grate as the possessive fiancée and jealous ex-girlfriend in Black Comedy. My favourite performer was Mike Shara, who plays up his good looks as the caddish Simon Gascoyne in Hound and the hapless Brindsley in Black Comedy. While Michael Simpson has some amusing one-liners as the lecherous Birdboot in Hound, he tends to overdo both that and his incompetent electrician character in Black Comedy. As a whole, however, the cast is enthusiastic and highly entertaining.

The choice to combine these two plays into one production is fitting. Both are just over 40 years old, one-act-long farces by famed British playwrights, with the same number of male and female roles in both casts. As staged by director Jim Warren, both are enjoyable ways to spend an evening, delivering witty dialogue, fun storylines, and clever uses of sets and props. Both, when you think about them too hard, don’t make a whole lot of sense by the end. Still, while the literal interplay of light and dark was a neat trick in Black Comedy, the comic substance pales in comparison to the preceding half of the double bill. With a more complex plot and twist ending, Hound succeeds at truly keeping the audience in the dark.