Jul
9
After having a recent conversation about Tom Stoppard, I decided to read his 1962 play THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND. It’s a play I first saw in high school and enjoyed but never revisited. I was surprised by a couple of things. I enjoyed it despite the lack of any real character development; it is a comedy for comedy’s sake on breaking the fourth wall and is fun as an intellectual game. Despite how I feel about most meta-narration for it’s own sake (”hey, look at me, I’m showing you this isn’t real, aren’t I clever?”), Stoppard’s execution is perfect and the only flaw I found was at the end I wanted it to keep going.
THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND focuses on two critics watching a house in the country murder mystery. It makes reference to Agatha Christie’s THE MOUSETRAP, which holds a special place for me as it was the first of Christie’s plays I saw in the theatre. I love these kinds of set-ups, my favorite being AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. Their minimalism and self-enclosure appeals to the analyst in me. Each is like an experiment: there is a problem to solved in an isolated field with a limited number of variables. This is the set up I used for my most recent novel, THE COMMITTEE, though with an attempt to flavor it with the feeling of a literary noir.
Stoppard takes this set up and has some good natured fun with it, and takes some good swipes at the theatre/critic relationship. Again, this appeals to me as I spent time studying with Donald Kuspit, a brilliant art critic who had a well known feud with Donald Judd over the artist as critic. It’s an interesting topic and Stoppard plays with it to great comic effect. And though he does not develop his characters at all, he points at the various power struggles in the critic and theatre world, again with humor and sharp insight.
THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND is excellent in its structure, doubling back on itself perfectly. If I weren’t so sentimental about some of its topics (I didn’t even get to Sherlock Holmes), I might find it a little mechanical with its lack of character, emotion, expression, or human touch. But it is an entertainment, and it entertains with a sharp wit, a wink, and a nod to the theatre insider. As intellectual exercises go, it’s hard to find one that is more fun.
