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| Remak Ramsey, Jane Connell, Carrie Nye, Konrad Matthaei. |
THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND and AFTER MAGRITTE [Comedy/British/One-Acts]
A: Tom Stoppard; D: Joseph Hardy; CH: Patricia Birch; S: William Ritman; C:
Joseph G. Aulisi; L: Richard Nelson; P: Susan Richardson, Lawrence Goosen, and
Seth Schapiro; T: Theatre Four (OB); 4/23/72-6/3/73 (465)
“After Magritte” [Crime/Family]; “The Real Inspector Hound”
[Crime/Mystery/Theatre]
These English one-act imports were a resounding success,
running Off Broadway for over a year. The opening piece, and also the shorter,
was “After Magritte,” an amusing, but only modestly appreciated satire that
Harold Clurman called “a quasi-surrealist parody of the English police
melodrama.” Styled after Magritte’s surrealistic paintings, the action involves
the entrance of a detective named Holmes (Edmond Genest) into the home of an
apparently bizarre family and his subsequent questioning of everyone concerning
a crime he suspects they may have committed. The seemingly weird behavior of
the characters is all rationally motived, though, providing Stoppard with material
for playing with themes of illusion and reality. The expert cast included
Carrie Nye, Jane Connell, Remak Ramsey, and Konrad Matthaei.
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| Boni Enten, Edmond Genest, Carrie Nye, Jane Connell, Remak Ramsey. |
The chief offering and the one given ovations was “The Real Inspector Hound,” a play-within-a-play spoof of both Agatha Christie-type mystery plays and theatre critics. Seated in a side box are two such journalists, Birdboot (Tom Lacy) and Moon (David Rounds). The latter is a second stringer with feelings of enmity for first string reviewers. This pair is viewing a conventional murder mystery set in Muldoon Manor, the ostentatious home of upper-crust characters. As the action progresses, we are privy to the cracks of these men, one of whom, Birdboot, has been lusting after an actress in the play. The idiotic vanities and vagaries of the critics are mercilessly lampooned as we hear them discuss the play.
Eventually Birdboot and Moon are drawn into the play’s
action when, responding to an unanswered phone ringing on the stage, one of them leaves his seat to answer it. The results, for the most part, are hysterically
funny as well as thought-provoking in their effective brainteasing with
metaphysical issues of shifting reality levels.
Stoppard “holds the relationship of audience and stage up to
a droll light in a way that restores playfulness to the theatre,” chuckled Dick
Brukenfeld. Among the strong features pointed out by the reviews were
its clever and witty use of language, the high-spirited humor of Stoppard’s
undergraduate conceptions, and the shrewdness of his satirical mockery of
literary and artistic pretensions. “It is very funny and civilized, involving
despite its detachment, and, by God, there even lurks an indefinable but
necessary extra dimension in it, like that bit of truffle at the heart of a
goose-liver pâté,” declared John Simon. Among less fervent admirers was
Clurman, who wrote, “I tried hard to enjoy the event, but I found it trivial
and arid.”
The production was excellent, with kudos for the director,
designers, and cast. All the actors in “After Magritte” were involved, along
with Boni Enten, Brian Murray, and Abe de la Houssaye.
