REVIEW: Mayfield masterfully mines mid-Century mystery
British mid-Century writer Anthony Shaffer was an aficionado of gaming. From tic-tac-toe to three dimensional chess, he loved them all. So was his close friend, the Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Back in the late ‘60s Sondheim challenged his game buddy to write a play about a complex battle between two skilled players. Shaffer did just that, and the result called Sleuth became a huge Tony Award-winning hit and spun out two movies.
The veteran vehicle has found a new home in the latest mounting at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre, running through August 4.
Any theatre that takes on Sleuth assumes a number of problems right off the head. With the success of the show almost 50 years ago, a lot of spin-offs were produced: Wait Until Dark, Death and the Maiden, The Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Although they were mostly successful at the time, subsequent productions have not done well – and the genre has grown creaky with age. Even Sleuth’s treatment of women, class and foreigners is hard to justify nowadays, and the faux-Victorian dialogue, which once crackled, had grown limp.
However, if the approach is to treat the vehicle as a period piece, it can work – as it generally does in director Marti Maraden’s crisp production for the Mayfield. Maybe the tooth marks of many overripe productions in the past can still be seen but Stratford veteran Maraden makes sure that all the tooth marks are hers. Her two superlative actors Michael Hanrahan and Tyrone Savage attack the dialogue with a freshness – as if being delivered for the first time.
In short, in good hands Sleuth remains an “edge-of-the-seat thriller.” In essence, Shaffer has penned both a terrific mystery and a take-off of all the old Agatha Christie potboilers. The production satirizes the originals while using their time-honoured technical devices and giving the grand old dame a timeless feel.
Andrew Wyke (Hanrahan – a Toronto performer with considerable stage and screen experience) is an eccentric, off-beat and very successful British mystery writer. He lives (of course) in a gloomy old British mansion (atmospheric set by John Dinning containing a bewildering collection of games, books and a lifetime collection of stuff). In a well planned exercise in quirky whimsy and deadly intent, Wyke invites his wife’s lover Milo Tindle (Savage – an up and comer from the Toronto scene) for an evening of (fun and…) games. Milo is rather twitchy about the invitation but Andrew seems quite accepting of the idea of losing his wife to the interloper. His only concern seems to be that Milo keep her in the financial comfort she’s used to.
The first of the evening’s complexities kicks in when Wyke comes up with a cockamamie plan to have Tindle steal his wife’s jewels and sell them. We of the audience immediately react with, “Don’t go down that twisted path!” But of course there would be no play if he didn’t.
The difficulty with any plot description is that it lets the air out of this increasingly complex brain teaser. Much of the fun comes from watching these two evenly-matched dueling gamesters battle it out. Will Milo be dispatched by the revolver on the staircase? Will the Nordic mistress be strangled by the stocking? Will Colonel Mustard perform the dastardly feat in the living room with the candelabra?
Watching these two deadly deceivers turn the tables on each other is delightful. Hanrahan’s Wyke is gleefully manic as he relishes Shaffer’s language, savouring the stylish and ironic words like a gourmet attacking a Michelin meal. This is a man who enjoys the hunt as much as the prize. Savage takes his lead but gives no prisoners in his enthusiastic embrace of this epic cat-and-mouse game as the pendulum of power swings back and forth. Both are very well aided by a small supporting cast.
The two are a cracked fun-house mirrored reflection of each other and nothing in this tangled web is as it seems.
