21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Game's a Foot., February 25, 2002
This review is from: The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (Paperback)
In 'The Real Inspector Hound', neither the lampooning of the country-house murder-mystery warhorse, nor the digs at shallow and venal theatre critics, nor the use of Ionesco's dramatic anti-logic to warp the structure and language of the play, is particularly original or ambitious. Two critics with their own personal and professional axes to grind sit in an auditorium mirroring 'us' while watching and commenting on a wretchedly cliched 'Mousetrap' rip-off; their desires and fears loop the play and they find themselves the main players. What makes the play an eternal delight is the way Stoppard grounds the European ideas in a very English sensibility; the Wildean sparkle of the hackneyed dialogue; and the uproarious wit with which he turns straw targets into philosophical vortices. More importantly, the spatial interplay between two temporally distinct narratives of 'reality' looks forward to the playwright's masterpiece 'Arcadia'.
'After Magritte' is a companion piece to 'Hound' - it too parodies crime stories, and it too features a detached critic (in this case a policeman, Inspector Foot, investigating a robbery) entering the world of the play (the crime). The most visual of plays, its effects depending on elaborate Magritte-inspired tableaux, the piece is less enjoyable than 'Hound' to read, the involved stage directions halting the wit. Conversely, it's the play in the volume one is most eager to see performed. Stoppard puns on Magritte and Maigret: the domestic surrealism of the former and the burrowing detective logic of the latter seep into each other - the one is gridded by a logic that manages to interpret and connect the most disparate of enigmatic details; the latter is undermined by the same logic being mad and arbitary. The very first image reveals a distorted family composition being spied on by a policeman, a perfect image of disruptive desire trammelled by the Law, or dream by reality; an opposition Stoppard reverses and breaks down with some joyously bad puns.
'Dirty Linen' is comparatively straightforward, mixing mild political satire with bawdy farce. A Select Committee of MPs convenes in the tower of Big Ben to investigate press allegations of widespread sexual immorality in the House of Commons, apparently centring on one particular young 'mystery woman'. Coincidentally, the new clerk at the meeting, a ruthlessly ambitious young woman who goes through increasing states of undress during the play, seems to know her new employers rather well. In making comedy out of government bureaucracy, 'Linen' anticipates the famous TV series 'Yes Minister', but is at its funniest when content with surprisingly traditional farce, which survives Stoppard's reversals - dirty old men, busty, scantily-clad young ladies, doubles entendres, puns, breakdowns and manipulations of language, exits, entrances, deceit and misunderstanding.
'New-found-land' is a play-within-'Dirty Linen', and is set in the same House of Commons committee room, now requistioned by two civil servants, one very old, the other his protege. Both are ostensibly there to advise the Home Secretary on an application by an American for British citizenship (the plays were written for Stoppard's friend and collaborator Ed Berman, to celebrate his naturalisation), but soon diverts into two marvellous monologues - the elder Bernard remembering the day he won a bet with Lloyd-George; Arthur declaims a teeming, train travelogue of the United States.
'Dogg's Hamlet' plays like 'Just William' rewritten by Samuel Beckett with Anthony Burgess. A group of schoolboys, their headmaster Dogg, and a workman called Easy, prepare the stage for the school prizegiving and a production of 'Hamlet'. At this school, although they speak English, words have different meanings - e.g. 'Brick' means 'here', 'slab' becomes 'okay'. Easy, who speaks 'our' English, is baffled and increasingly angered - when a phrase like 'Have you got the time please, sir?' translates into Dogg 'Cretinous pig-faced, git?' you can see the comic possibilities (apparently Stoppard was inspired by a propositon of Wittgenstein's, and his play deals with serious issues such as the collective use of language, but 'Dogg's Hamlet' is much funnier than that old grump ever was). The performance of 'Hamlet' itself - a four-hour play cut to an economical 15 minutes, with an even shorter encore, and comprised mostly of its famous, now cliched tags - is inspired.
'Cahoot's Macbeth' performs the same trick with the Scottish play. It is dedicated to the Czech playwright and novelist Pavel Kahout, one of the signatories of Charta 77, banned by the Czech authorities from any cultural activities, and who held clandestine, abbreviated performances of Shakespeare with fellow blacklisted actors in friends' living room. It is in one such living room that 'Cahoot's Macbeth' is set, the performance being interrupted by a sarcastic police Inspector. Easy makes a reappearance, and the play disintegrates into Dogg, baffling the policeman, and, bringing this collection full-circle, erasing the line betwen stqge and audience. Though a political play, Stoppard mostly avoids didacticism, substituting platitudes with an astonishing, exhilerating verbal collapse, with Shakespeare both subverted and vindicated, the vibrancy and pliability of language affirmed against the deadly 'normalisation' of totalitarian regimes. At one point, the Inspector warns 'Words can be your friend or your enemy, depending on who's throwing the book, so watch your language', a proposition Stoppard dances with great gusto across this fabulous collection.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Meta, Very Weird, May 7, 2001
This review is from: The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (Paperback)
"The Real Inspector Hound" like most of Stoppard is an exercise in the meta-theatrical... with hilarious results. The story centers around two theatre critics watching a play on stage. Throughout the one act we're introduced to Moon and Birdboot (the critics), see their commentary on the ridiculously parodied murder-mystery play, and watch as they accidentially become part of it.
While these stranger elements may turn off some readers/audiences, it is undeniable that "The Real Inspector Hound" is witty and clever. For example, at one point a critic is caught on stage repeating a previous scene with an actress who is his ex-lover. The dialouge, which we've heard before, this time takes on a double-meaning and fits both "characters'" relationship as well as the critic-actress relationship. At the very least, it's entertaining.
Staging the play is probably even more difficult. I'm part of a production going up in a couple of months and the casting, sets and dialouge are extremely challenging. However, if sufficient acting talent can be found for the critics, and enough work is put into the show, I think it could be amazing.
More than other plays, reading "The Real Inspector Hound" requires imagining the show being staged in order to understand the subtleties and appreciate the humor. A great one act.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Review Limited to The Real Inspector Hound, February 12, 2002
This review is from: The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (Paperback)
This relatively early play displays all the gifts that made Stoppard famous. It is very funny, with truly witty dialogue and a extremely clever plot. The play is full of clever literary allusions. It is simultaneously a send up of British murder mysteries, Beckett, Pinter, and an attack on Drama critics. As with almost all of Stoppard's work, the humor and wit is used to deal with a serious subject with some philosophical dimensions, in this case the nature of reality and the relationship between real life and art. This is a farce with some serious dimensions. Stoppard is able to examine these themes without sacrificing in any way the humor of the piece, which can be enjoyed simply on the basis of the very funny dialogue and action. This play is not as rich as later works, such as Arcadia or The Invention of Love, in which the humor and philosophical interests are balanced with greater character development and humanity. Very enjoyable.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
