One of my favourite playwrights is Tom Stoppard, a veritable theatrical genius. His play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of my favourites; it’s an intellectual tennis match with the audience, as Stoppard retells the story of Hamlet from the point of view of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s two school friends. Throughout the play, the characters ponder on their purpose, the meaning of life, and the role of the theatre in life (although, of course, just about nobody debates that last point out loud).
Some of these elements are transferred into The Real Inspector Hound, Stoppard’s first play and a lively parody of the country-house whodunit, particularly Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Our two main characters are Birdboot and Moon, theatre critics. Birdboot is a fickle critic who is willing to give actresses positive reviews in exchange for certain favours. Moon is a second-string critic, substituting for Higgs, the first-stringer, who has failed to show up.
