Word: sleuthing
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...murder-mystery thriller is a theatrically endangered species. Seasons go by without one, and there have been seven lean years since the last dandy scalp tingler, Sleuth. Deathtrap is a congenial successor-literate, amusing, booby-trapped with scarifying surprises, a brimming tumbler of arsenic and Schweppes...
...should damn a college drama society for producing an enormously difficult play. Although Anthony Shaffer's thriller Sleuth may not challenge a company the way a play by Ibsen or O'Neill does, in some ways the risks are even greater. In a naturalist classic, after all, the director and cast can strive for emotional honesty to compensate for a lack of maturity or finely-honed technique; Sleuth, however, is an exercise in style, and it demands a display of brazen theatrical exhibitionism, a roaring hamminess firmly entrenched in technical precision. The actors must savor Shaffer's dialogue, sputter...
...blandness that is most offensive here--the lack of subtlety or nuance. This Sleuth whizzes by without ever being felt, and although it cannot help but amuse, it does not punch. When a good comedy is not played right, a short pause occurs between the delivery of the line and the laughter from the audience--a pause where the audience reviews the words, and then realizes that they add up to something funny. But when the delivery is sharp, you feel yourself beginning to laugh even before the line is finished. That never happens in the Leverett production. Although director...
...small opening-night audience applauded so enthusiastically--because, what the hell, those guys worked up quite a sweat, and they didn't drop a line. But "workmanlike" should be the last adjective that Anthony Shaffer's scintillating thriller-symphony evokes. A pity, but all too literally, this Sleuth substitutes "uh-lan" for elan...
...Sleuth...