STAGE REVIEW : Suspenseful Sparring in ‘Sleuth’

Whodunit? Mustn’t tell. The program tells us so. And if there are people around who still don’t know who did what, when and to whom in “Sleuth,” well . . . they won’t find out here.

Knowing is not the point of Anthony Shaffer’s suspense thriller which opened Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre. Not knowing is. This, of course, poses instant problems for the future of this piece that has been around since 1970. Who can keep a secret 18 years?

The real fun doesn’t lie in the facts. It lies in watching the maneuvering: two men stalking each other like cocks fighting over a small matter of sexual and territorial supremacy. (Aha! A clue.)

In this lavishly appointed touring production (David Potts did the spacious English country Gothic interior, Dennis Parichy the calculated lighting), two experts are making all the right moves.

They are Stacy Keach as Andrew Wyke, a mystery novel writer with a passion for games--and Maxwell Caulfield as Milo Tindle, the travel agent from Dulwich with a passion for new destinations. These include Wyke’s wife Marguerite. (Getting warmer?)

Destinations and destinies mingle devilishly in this construct, commonly referred to as Shaffer’s first play. “Sleuth” is play in its most literal sense, as in a succession of games--in this case, dazzling, dangerous ones that put the players at odds and at peril.

If this sort of “Masterpiece Theaterish” snappy/smart, literate/genteel entertainment delights you, this revival of “Sleuth” should prove thoroughly rewarding. (But hurry: The production is here only through July 17.)

Keach and Caulfield are a very good clash, with the former in top form and the latter only slightly hampered by a few disguises. (Vocally, especially; acoustics at the Ahmanson still get in the way of words now and then, despite performers who know all there is to know about projection.)

In a broader sense, “Sleuth” is today, as it was in 1970, less a theater piece than an exhibition--an opportunity for Shaffer to display virtuosic powers of invention, for two magnetic and accomplished actors to strut their considerable stuff and for their director--the ubiquitous Marshall W. Mason--to choreograph this danse macabre with a taut, firm hand.

The piece is not without a few concentric and intersecting reflections. As in one of those mystery novels Wyke himself might have written, it even comes complete with clues about itself as art.

Says Tindle, in a sobering late speech to Wyke:

“Take a look at yourself, Andrew, and ask yourself a few simple questions about your attachment to the English detective story. Perhaps you might come to realize that the only place you can inhabit is a dead world--a country-house world where peers and colonels die in their studies; where butlers steal the port and pert parlor maids cringe, weeping malapropisms behind green baize doors. It’s a world of coldness . . . and two-dimensional characters who are not expected to communicate. . . .

“To be puzzled is all.”

Performances at 135 N. Grand Ave. run Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., with matinees Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 2. Ends July 17. Tickets: $9-$32.50; (213) 410-1062.