SLEUTH. To 5 July.

Tour

SLEUTH
by Anthony Shaffer.

Bill Kenwright Ltd Tour to 5 July 2008.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 April at Richmond Theatre (to 3 May).

The old games still work, with or without a police presence.
Anthony Shaffer’s 1970 play is the thriller equivalent of Look Back in Anger. Tom Stoppard had been laughing at the creaky stage conventions of old-fashioned stage-thrillers in The Real Inspector Hound, but Shaffer offered a wider critique and created a new style, where games-playing kept veering plot in new directions.

He broke the straight progress of older thrillers. And audience trust in what people said. Plot focus shifted from the improbable execution of crime to motivations hidden behind human passions. The puzzle became psychological, the action that of the mad, mad, mad world then emerging from the newly broken-down belief in traditional institutions.

Life on thriller stages post-Shaffer was a contest, a series of stratagems where behaviour was manipulative and games became deadly serious. Sleuth arrived in a world where the old verities of detective fiction still had a market, one large enough to give echt-English crime-writer Andrew Wyle a solid income. And with that went the notion of the English as fair-minded and just. When Italian-Jew Milo Tindle arrives at Wyke’s house, such complacency is tested and xenophobia surfaces. Other tensions, and pretences, lie close beneath the surface.

Joe Harmston’s touring revival is strongly played. Simon MacCorkindale’s Wyke has a gallery of self-pleased facial expressions, confident bearing and bodily bending to show emphasis. By the end his essential childishness emerges as he tears around his house in desperate pleasure looking for clues, hardly believing reality will break-in through his mullioned windows.

But it’s Michael Praed’s adulterous parvenu holiday-agent that makes this production. Youthfully confident to the point of insolence, he chews gum, sitting straight-backed in his shiny suit, then discovers a delight in joining Wyke’s games. This last just about explains how, despite his businesslike manner and contempt for Wyke’s ways, Praed’s Milo comes to show such skill at pretence.

Harmston allows the play’s humour to emerge while Simon Scullion’s detailed set, with its playful elements, is lit by Mark Howett to shade into cold colouring as the first act mood tenses, or to bring in extra intensity as the second act’s revelations develop. In all, a robust revival.

Andrew Wyke: Simon MacCorkindale.
Milo Tindle: Michael Praed.

Director: Joe Harmston.
Designer: Simon Scullion.
Lighting: Mark Howett.
Sound: Jonathan Suffolk.
Fight arranger: Jo McLaren Clark.

2008-04-29 08:36:32