Complex murder mystery set to keep audience guessing
IT seems there is no stopping Tom Stoppard, the author of the Maleny Players’ after-Easter production The Real Inspector Hound!
The complications of this murder mystery will set the combined audience brain scrambling to puzzle out who the murderer could possibly be and who the victim is. It’s funny, but ironic at the same time.
It appears that Stoppard in 1967, as a successful but hard-competing playwright, decided to get his own back against the theatre critics, who had raved about Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’ enough to keep it running at that point for 10 years! (It has now been running in London for 71 years!) Stoppard’s original title for The Real Inspector Hound was The Critics.
The confusing convolutions of this play-within-a-play is already keeping the cast guessing as they rehearse for their April 5-21 season in the Playhouse in the Maleny Showgrounds.
‘This theatre suits this back-to-front play very well’, says English-born Director Patricia Lovell, who is having great fun with the British dramatist’s teasing work, one of so many it’s quite a task to list them all.
As with our own David Williamson, it appears Stoppard’s very varied plays have been sparked by topical events and issues at key moments in his life: but always with the aim to entertain!
His latest play in 2020 Leopoldstadt finally tackled his Czechoslovakian childhood (born Tomas Straussler in 1937), so affected by the Holocaust.
His credits include writing dialogue for Star Wars and 101 Dalmatians. Also the popular inside-out version of Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; and the gymnastic philosophers’ romp ‘Jumpers’, which starred Diana Rigg.
Gala Opening tickets for this first Stoppard production in Maleny (7pm Friday 5 April) are already at a premium.
Bookings via trybooking.com or cash sales only at MAD Gallery Maple Street.