Kyle’s Reviews > Plays 1: The Real Inspector Hound / After Magritte / Dirty Linen / New-Found-Land / Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 137 of 211
What may have been a silly French farce for its time, a handful of Members of Parliament who all have the hots for the same scantily-clad clerk post-swinging sixties, has now become a perennial scandal for elected officials in our nosy era of social media. Strange that this political parody was interrupted by another play rhapsodizing the American landscape, but at least now I know what to look at for seeing Big Ben.
— May 09, 2024 11:18AM
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Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is on page 72 of 211
The first two plays are closely connected as silly inspectors attempt to solve an inconsequential crime, but re-reading them shows a very British contrast. Hound is all about the elegance of a country estate while Margritte is the council housing version that’s crude and xenophobic. So witty suave England as they imagine themselves on stage and the tawdry nation that they are and always have been.
— Apr 17, 2024 03:04PM
Kyle
is finished
Stoppard's love of Shakespeare is put in a blender to give audiences two versions of famous tragedies. Firstly, schoolchildren are awarded by Headmaster Dogg and then perform a fifteen minute Hamlet with encore. Cahoot the dog has living room players in the Scottish play during communist Czechoslovakia being bothered by the Inspector. Easy comes to save the day in both plays first unwittingly and then Wittgensteinly.
— Nov 12, 2016 07:16PM
Kyle
is on page 137 of 211
On the one hand, applause for Stoppard's deluge of dialogue that makes special committee proceedings and a rhapsodic tour of the United States seem light and breezy. On the other hand, how much of this play is really about watching a secretary have items of clothes slowly removed while ministers ogle the Page-3 Girls and make lewd strewth sounds while seeming to uphold moral dignity. Somehow American expats are UKed.
— Nov 05, 2016 12:42AM
Kyle
is on page 72 of 211
Guess you would have had to be there for this short play to make sense, and yet that is assuming that any sense is supposed to be made from this absurd attempt to recreate Magritte's artwork. How many plays would have played straight the cop-busting-in-accusingly storyline to make this pastiche familiar to the Lunch-hour Theatre Club-goers? At least Stoppard seems to have avoided an on-the-nose not-a-pipe visual gag.
— Oct 28, 2016 12:05AM
Kyle
is on page 44 of 211
An amusing Pythonesque piece of metatheatre with two critics transported to different places while reviewing what looks like a mundane drawingroom mystery, but may actually be the Mousetrap for ambitious Moon and adulterous Birdboot. They easily slip into the roles assigned by other characters and yet remain caught up in their surreal worlds. Wonder what old Canadian proverbs cover the triumph of art over commentary?
— Oct 24, 2016 05:49PM
