The Real Inspector Hound

The third play in Attic Theatre's threesome season is actually the fourth...!

The night begins with a presentation of Chekov's 'The Bear', a lumbering,
bad-tempered beast, which on one hand seems sluggish and hibernating, but can charge at you without warning at tremendous speed, crashing down everything in its path and bellowing with the potential to rip your head limb from limb, like a mother-in-law defending her cub when you happen to arrive home late and get in her way. Yet, like Winnie the Pooh or Humphrey, it's a classic comedy.

Stephen Lee plays the bear, and if any of you saw him in his Finley Award-winning performance of The Tempest, you can imagine what a cute and cuddly teddy bear he can be. Angelique Malcolm plays Mrs Bear, a role she is obviously suited for after a long history of producing children's plays with Class Act Theatre. Rebecca Bradley plays a variety of servants, maids, and serving-wenches with a thorough consistency of characterisation, and Ben Russell steals the final moments of the show with a jaw-dropping performance as the mysterious stranger.

Unfortunately I didn't arrive in time to see the actual play, but the programme notes are very good, and if you've seen one Chekov, you've seen them all. Actually, I don't recall ever seeing a Chekov...but you get my point. From what I gather the play lacked a director, as Mr Lee was too busy either participating or directing the next play on the bill; but as we all know many productions do very well without seeming to have a director, so this did not prove a big hindrance. And the outdoor setting of the St George's College cloister suggested the drawing room of a Russian manor remarkably well, despite the balmy Perth summer evening weather.


We finally come to the main play on the programme, Tom Stoppard's 'The Real Inspector Hound' - a 'No one will leave the house" whodunnit -type thriller, set in the isolated moors of Essex. The outdoor setting of the St George's College cloister suggested the drawing room of an English manor remarkably well, despite the balmy Perth summer evening weather.

On opening night the show seemed delayed by some sort of last-minute panic backstage, and got off to a rather slow start. But the groundwork was well and truly laid when Mrs Drudge, played by Andie Wafer, employed the useful technique of tuning in to a radio broadcast to get us all up to speed, as well as a telephone conversation which quite soundly set up the promise of what was to come.

Of course, the plot is littered with the usual red-herrings. Ben Russell reprises his role from the first play as the mysterious stranger, Simon Gascoyne, whose appearance at the manor triggers a scenario of revenge and jealousy - but is it really a motive for murder, or just a paranoid grudge, as the skeletons in the cupboard come home to roost?

I was very much looking forward to seeing Katy Warner perform, in a play this time, as the young, fresh and perky Felicity Cunningham. This new graduate shows brilliant promise, and I have no hesitation in suggesting that she'll go straight to the top.

Keep your eye on Kim Martin, as Major Magnus Muldoon. I don't want to give anything away, but he is not who he pretends to be..!

But it was when Alinta Carroll, as Lady Cynthia Muldoon, swept in like a poem, a vision of eternal grace, that I really stood to attention. She exuded a radiance, and an inner sadness. The part as written is a mere cypher, but she manages to make Cynthia a REAL person. A beautiful performance; a collector's piece.


The second act, however, fails to fulfil the promise of the first. The story hovers in a kind of limbo until we finally meet Inspector Hound, played with enthusiasm by Graham Mitchell. It was at this point that the play for me came alive, the author learning from the masters of the genre and creating a real situation, all the loose ends resolving in a startling denouement. Let us give thanks for a good clean show without a trace of smut.

But perhaps all this would be for nothing, were it not for the performance which I genuinely consider to be one of the summits in the range of contemporary theatre. In what is possibly the finest Cynthia of the past thirty years, Alinta Carroll proved to have more talent in her little finger than all of the rest combined. I consider it a public scandal that the Equity Awards to date have neglected to acknowledge her presence on the Perth stage...adjudicators, take note!

According to the programme, others taking part included Giovanni Bartuccio. I must have somehow missed his brief appearance onstage...or was he the mysterious body? Perhaps he took a more backstage role, somehow directing the whole event?

A rattling good evening out. I was held.



The Real Inspector Hound/The Bear continues at St George's until Feb 19th, 8pm nightly except Sundays and Mondays. Gates open at 6.30pm
for picnics. Bookings through BOCS ticketing.

Cheers
Craig