Josh Aaron McCabe and Enrico Spada play a couple of theater critics without a clue in Shakespeare & Company's The Real Inspector Hound

The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Jonathan Croy. Presented by Shakespeare & Company at the Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA, through November 7.

Reviewed by Helen Epstein.

If you are looking for a light, literate, zany evening of entertainment, you can do no better than Shakespeare & Company’s current production of Tom Stoppard’s Real Inspector Hound. Written after The Mousetrap became a London institution, this play takes off on whodunits, drama critics, femmes fatales, innocent young girls, English aristocracy, and Canadian sayings!

Years of working with teenagers in the Company’s extensive education has made Jonathan Croy the perfect director for this play. He’s encouraged his actors to shamelessly milk their roles for all the whimsy they’re worth and to be as unafraid of the silly as of the serious. His design team has come up with a gorgeous set, eye-catching costumes, and amazing props and sounds. The actors, all veterans of Shakespeare & Company’s training program, make every word sing. Stoppard would be very pleased.

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Helen Epstein is the author of Music Talks in paper and on Kindle.