Join us for the staging of our spring play, “The Real Inspector Hound” in the Knight Fine Arts Center Theater.

Friday, April 19, at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 20, at 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 21, at 2 p.m.

Admission is free with open seating.

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If you haven’t heard of multi-Tony Award-winning playwright Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound,” then you are in for some heady fun next week in the Knight Fine Arts Center Theater. Follow two theater critics, Moon and Birdfoot, as they attend a production of a country house murder mystery — and watch as the line between reality and illusion begins to blur. The show is a little like if you took a “whodunit” spoof, added in some meta-theater twists, a dash of some pompous British accents, leaving you with, well, a delightful evening spent at the Reserve theater.

This year’s spring play is a short romp, running just a little over an hour with no intermission, and it’s been a blast for the cast and crew as they prepare for opening night.

“I knew I wanted to do a comedy,” said Fine & Performing Arts Department faculty member and Director Donalee Ong. “And I’ve always liked this play. It’s a little hard to categorize — it has farce, parody, satire, absurdism — and the play within a play is melodramatic! And I think it’s pretty cool that kids will leave Reserve with a little taste of Tom Stoppard.”

When you’re dealing with a play that plays around with narrative structure, a question for the Director and cast is how do you approach the staging? How do you let the audience know that time and place are shifting?

“We jumped right in and approached that blurring of reality and illusion as if it was perfectly normal,” explained Ong. “At the first read-through, it was fun to hear the cast react and exclaim, ‘Wait, what?’”

Another challenge to consider concerned the accents — British, as previously mentioned. But this turned out to be an easy hill to climb.

“I have to say, they’re doing a really good job with the accents and were so excited to try them out,” shared Ong. This has been the theme of this particular cast of nine — adept talent and enthusiasm in spades. Ong shared that it has been a pleasure to work with them this season, and she is very proud of them.

She has a few favorite moments and lines from the show, but ultimately it's the playfulness of Stoppard’s style and his direct aim at genre and critics that tickles her.

“This is not the only play Stoppard wrote with a play within a play,” she shared. “In this piece, he pokes some fun at Agatha Christie's play, ‘The Mousetrap,’ the longest-running play in London, opening in 1952 and closing in 2020 due to Covid. But he also pokes fun at the pompous theater critics who, in part, kept Mousetrap going with their reviews. ‘The Mousetrap’ is known for its twists and turns and surprise ending. Stoppard toyed with this idea and gave his play (“The Real Inspector Hound”) a title which gave away the ending to Mousetrap — annoying the producers to no end!”

But when asked, Ong does share an exchange she particularly loves:

Birdboot: Has it started yet?

Moon: It's a pause.

Birdboot: A pause? You can't start with a pause!

Can you end with a pause?

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…Probably not! We can’t wait to take in this show, to revel and laugh, and to applaud our cast, crew and all involved in such a phenomenal production. Break a leg, Pioneers!