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The Real Inspector Hound Reviews
Washington Post- Recommended
"...David Elias has a funny turn as Inspector Hound, clad, naturally enough, in Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker and Inverness cape (Ivania Stack designed the costumes), while Kimberly Gilbert and Emily Townley ham it up as Manor denizens Felicity Cunningham and Lady Cynthia Muldoon. Manically racing a wheelchair around designer Daniel Pinha’s succinct aristocratic-parlor set, a blanket-swaddled John Dow plays Major Magnus, who has turned up mysteriously at the Manor."
Washington Examiner- Highly Recommended
"..."Saying that Tom Stoppard wrote a witty play when he wrote "The Real Inspector Hound" is like saying that there are various colors in nature. It's an understatement of mammoth proportions. In fact, Stoppard's wit in "The Real Inspector Hound" comes on so quickly and completely, the farce immediately tumbles into nonstop, high-octane entertainment. And right under the chaos, a vibrant intelligence is at work."
WeLoveDC- Highly Recommended
"...It is also because I am not a critic (but kinda am) that I was able to laugh throughout MetroStage’s production of The Real Inspector Hound. From the title you might assume that the show is a hokey whodunit- and in part it is. At its core however, the show is a farce that shamelessly pokes fun at the profession of theatre criticism and culminates into a collision of critics and actors that is very reminiscent of Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare."
Talkin Broadway- Highly Recommended
"...The last time MetroStage in Alexandria, Virginia, brought together actors Ralph Cosham, Michael Tolaydo, and John Dow with director John Vreeke—in Heroes, Tom Stoppard's adaptation of a French play—the theater received the Helen Hayes Awards' Canadian Embassy Award for Outstanding Ensemble, Resident Play. They're all back at MetroStage this spring with another (and superior) Stoppard work, The Real Inspector Hound, and they're better than ever."
Washington City Paper- Recommended
"...It is a crack cast, though; Kimberly Gilbert and Catherine Flye are among the other D.C.-based favorites, with four (count them, four!) stout men and true rotating in the non-speaking part of the corpse who lies unseen on the drawing-room carpet for much of the show. And because timing’s everything with a comedy like Inspector Hound, the folks at MetroStage may well have fixed the problem in the time it’s taken me to tell you about it."
Arlington Connection- Recommended
"...Tolaydo is unabashedly funny as one of two second-string theater critics assigned to cover an equally second-string mystery play while Cosham is more subtle but no less funny. The tone of the piece is evident even before the house lights go down as Cosham takes one of two theater seats located at the back of the set and stares out at the stage and the real audience beyond. Soon, Tolaydo enters the auditorium scampering up and down the aisles in search of his seat. Cosham calls him over to take the seat next to him and they exchange pleasantries as they await the beginning of the mystery, a typical whodunit set in a manor in the middle of the marshes of middle England. Just as you might expect, the room has a radio (for news flashes of a murderer on the loose) a telephone on a stand (where, of course, in the course of the play it is announced that the wires have been cut) and a corpse."
Fairfax Times- Highly Recommended
"...Skillfully helmed by veteran director John Vreeke, "The Real Inspector Hound" glitters with bright wit as Stoppard dissects without mercy the traditional tropes so familiar to fans of police procedurals and classic English murder mysteries. The play is such unmitigated fun that you are almost certain to sit tingling on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next unexpected twist and unforeseen turn"
Alexandria Times- Highly Recommended
"...This production is fast-paced, so pull your bowler down firmly before entering the theatre lest it blow off in a storm of witticisms. With a crack cast and a dizzying plot, it’s another winner for MetroStage."