The Timing Could Have Been Better

Few playwrights are as accomplished at theatrical trickery as Tom Stoppard. And very few of his plays are as full of it as the play that launched his career, “The Real Inspector Hound,” now at Fullerton’s Vanguard Theatre.

To begin with, the two leading characters are theater critics, sitting in a box, discussing the play they are watching, along with their personal agendas. Moon is a second-string critic who is concerned about moving up in the dramatic world and is terrified of Puckeridge, the third-string critic who is his own nemesis.

Birdboot’s problems are simpler. This critic likes to fraternize with the actresses he reviews, very intimately at that, all the while claiming to be happily married.

Tom Royer, as Moon, and Brian Page, as Birdboot, make all the right moves as Stoppard’s dreadful critics, including a calm superiority while discussing the play before them. They are pompous, self-aggrandizing, petty and less concerned with theater than with their own welfare, wallowing in their peccadilloes. They are often very funny.

The play-within-a-play they are watching is “Murder at Muldoon Manor,” a tired retread of the murder-in-a-murky-mansion genre.

It is also very funny, particularly when Stoppard’s satire requires reality to be thrown out the window as he hurls the critics bodily into the action on stage.

It all works adequately in Jill Cary Martin’s staging but never reaches the refined peak of hilarity it might have. The timing is off-kilter throughout most of the evening, without the subtle buildup of energy toward the laughs that Stoppard is famous for. The crackling potency of the writing never really gets into gear.

In the “Muldoon Manor” play, Joyce Eriksen is very good as mysterious housekeeper Mrs. Drudge. Lesa Vander Bie has the right limpid pertness as ingenue Felicity Cunningham, and Brenda Parks is solid as randy widow Cynthia Muldoon. They would look very much better with more adept direction.

As Simon Gascoyne, the fateful interloper who is having an affair with both Cynthia and Felicity, Louis Hale looks too much like he’s acting, as does Stu Eriksen as Magnus Muldoon, Cynthia’s wheelchair-bound brother.

Stolidly stiff and starched as Inspector Hound appears, Clay Eichelberger also needs better direction to properly set his character in the clockwork machinations of Stoppard’s comedy.

*

“The Real Inspector Hound,” Vanguard Theatre, 699A S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends Nov. 20. $15-$17. (714) 526-8007. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Tom Royer: Moon

Brian Page: Birdboot

Joyce Eriksen: Mrs. Drudge

Louis Hale: Simon Gascoyne

Lesa Vander Bie: Felicity Cunningham

Brenda Parks: Cynthia Muldoon

Stu Eriksen: Magnus Muldoon

Clay Eichelberger: Inspector Hound

A Vanguard Theatre Ensemble production of Tom Stoppard’s comedy. Director: Jill Cary Martin. Scenic design: Stu Eriksen. Lighting design: Michelle Peterson. Stage manager: Keith Gottlieb.