‘Sleuth’ Effective in Sign Language

Anthony Shaffer’s hoary mystery “Sleuth” is given a much-needed face lift by director Dennis Erdman and his talented cast at Deaf West Theatre.

The play is performed entirely in American Sign Language. (Simultaneous translations can be heard via headsets, which are handed out gratis in the lobby before the show.)

Bernard Bragg plays Andrew Wyke, the coolly supercilious British mystery writer who plots an ingenious revenge upon his wife’s lover Milo Tindle (Troy Kotsur).

An accomplished mime as well as an actor, Bragg paints masterful word pictures with his hands. Andrew must be a charmer, but he must also be a monumental egoist who is eventually undone by his own good opinion of himself, a distinction Bragg renders beautifully. (On a niggling note, Bragg himself is almost undone by costumer Maro Parian’s polyester notion of an English country gentleman’s attire.)

Andrew’s wife’s lover Milo may be ingenuous, but he’s nobody’s fool. Initially offhand, even somewhat bumbling, Kotsur’s Milo builds powerfully through various stages of perplexity, terror, rage and icy intensity. Erdman’s fluid direction counterbalances the actors’ blocking and other essential stage business with their signing.

Dependent as it is upon the element of surprise, Shaffer’s play has been sadly overproduced in the 25 years since its premiere. This entertaining and unique production, however, rekindles our sense of the unexpected.

* “Sleuth,” Deaf West Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope, Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 12. $15. (213) 660-4673 or (213) 660-8826. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.