Word: stoppard
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Written By Tom Stoppard...
...jubilant finale, the troupe is now performing an uproarious double bill about bad theater and worse reviewers: Tom Stoppard's staging of his own The Real Inspector Hound, followed by Sheridan's dizzying spoof of epic tragedy, The Critic, last seen on Broadway 40 years ago in a production that featured Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson in roles that McKellen and Petherbridge play. Hound is a schoolboy-clever send-up of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, with all its clunking contrivances, coupled with the petulant fantasies of a second-string critic (Petherbridge) about an uprising by all the world...
...fair, each actor individually does well, but as an ensemble they lack cohesion. Lines evaporate. Little carries across the stage. And along with the passion, the humor in the dialogue--a Stoppard play should be a rollicking experience--is lost as well...
Speaking about a political prisoner whose cause she's espoused, Annie says to Henry, who is clearly a Stoppard alter-ego, "You think that he can't write and he thinks that that's all you can do." Since writing may possibly be the only thing that Stoppard can do-and he does it pretty well--his words are worth respecting...
Perhaps with a bit more practice, the actors will achieve the necessary unity to pull off a Stoppard play convincingly. It would certainly be a worthy aspiration...