Energetic farce draws laughs for its overacted caricatures

I was not the only reviewer at this play.

Sitting on a balcony slightly to the left of the stage sat a very well-dressed man, thumbing his playbill and tapping his foot impatiently. Another reviewer soon joined him and the two began loudly discussing what was about to be seen onstage.

These two critics, I soon found out, are as important to "The Real Inspector Hound" as Inspector Hound himself is to the "Murder at Muldoon Manor." The critics have come to review the amusingly derivative 'whodunit' that is being performed onstage.

The critics, Birdboot and Moon, comment on the murder mystery as it progresses, but seem more interested in their own neurotic problems: Birdboot and his lady chasing, despite having a wife at home, and Moon and his brooding jealousy of Higgs, the first-string critic at his paper.

It is not long before the critics and their neuroses begin seeping into the play onstage, altering its course and confusing the identities of some of the characters.

"The Real Inspector Hound" is a parody and a farce, with a gleeful surreality thrown into the mix.

The conventions of the murder mystery are lampooned comedically, and every cliche of the genre makes its appearance: the lovely but dangerous vixens, the roguishly handsome stranger, the elusive and hostile cripple in the attic, the unsettling corpse in the living room and the appearance of the intelligent and inquisitive inspector.

The characters in the play are caricatures and the actors did a fine job playing up the humorous predictability of these stereotypes. Particularly good were Scott Eckert '03 as the Major Magnus Muldoon and Sujan Trivedi '03 as Birdboot.

The only thing that seemed slightly out of place was perhaps the performance of Moon by Steven Berneman '02. Considering the over emoting of the rest of the cast, appropriate for the farce, Berneman just seemed almost too believable. This was a rare case in which a little overacting would have been welcomed.

I also disliked the placing of the two critics — on a balcony to the left of the stage. The critics are meant to be sitting upstage center, so that they are behind yet right in the middle of the action.

Their balcony placement meant for a lot of swiveling heads in the audience, and made it difficult to focus on both the murder mystery and the critics.

Overall though, "The Real Inspector Hound" is an energetic, harmless little comedy with quite a few laughs, and I recommend checking it out.