Gambling men

The games they play in NETC's Sleuth

by Steve Vineberg

SLEUTH By Anthony Shaffer. Direction and set design by Tom Saupé. Costumes by Polly Flynn. Lighting by Christopher Gates. With Bill Taylor and Steve Gould. A New England Theatre Company production at Anna Maria College, Paxton, through November 8.

Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth was a hit both in London's West End and on Broadway just as the '70s were getting started, and it was filmed a couple of years later with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. But after thriving for a while on the community-theater circuit, it abruptly dropped out of the repertory, superseded (ironically) by its closest imitation, Ira Levin's Deathtrap. After nearly three decades, the play feels distant -- a trifle from a bygone era. And not an especially pleasant one. It's a rather clammy and mean-spirited little thriller that will probably delight you only if you think gamesmanship is the greatest virtue humankind has discovered.

The plot, set in London, pits a middle-aged detective-story novelist, Andrew Wyke, a dinosaur for whom British detective fiction reached its zenith in the '30s, against a younger man, Milo Tindle, who has become involved with Wyke's estranged wife and wishes to marry her. Wyke claims to be more than eager to get rid of her, but he persuades Milo that the only way he can support her -- and keep her permanently out of Wyke's hair -- is to steal Wyke's jewels and fence them abroad. Wyke will be compensated by the insurance company, he assures Tindle, and everyone will win. Of course Andrew has something more vengeful up his sleeve, in the form of a game. (He adores games.) Before the evening is out, each man has had an opportunity to best the other in the course of what feels like an endless ongoing competition. What makes the play unappetizing, to my palate at least, is Shaffer's obvious dislike of Andrew Wyke, who is presented as the embodiment of corrupt old-style British values: he's not only deeply conservative but intolerant, xenophobic, and superficial. He's the straw man whose inevitable fall we're meant to cheer.

There's probably a good reason for Sleuth's disappearance from the repertory: like it or not (and many people, it's only fair to say, like it a great deal more than I do), it's a damn hard play to pull off. It needs a pair of energetic, inventive showmen, impeccable pacing and staging, and enjoyably ostentatious production elements, or else the two and a half hours of bullying and one-upmanship become dreary. So NETC's decision to take it on isn't just a sop to thriller-loving audiences. Both Bill Taylor, who plays Wyke, and Steve Gould, who plays Milo, are talented performers who work slavishly to shine up their roles. It would be unfair to comment on the problems in Taylor's performance, because on opening night he was obviously suffering from a debilitating cold; you wanted to award him the Croix de Guerre just for getting through the evening. (I assume he'll be in better form by the second weekend of the run; the performances I've seen him give in other NETC shows like The Merry Wives of Windsor and Rumors attest to his command of high style.)

Gould shows both personality and range, and he's got the better role by far, which is the reason Michael Caine was able to out-act Olivier in the movie version. I had some difficulty with Gould's emotional transitions: he has a tendency to overstate first and then pull back. But he's a promising young actor.

Despite the efforts of the two actors, however, the production is undistinguished, and in the case of a play like Sleuth that means, unfortunately, dull. Tom Saupé both directed and designed the set, and perhaps he could have used a little help. The set isn't elegant enough to suggest the kind of house an epicurean like Andrew Wyke would inhabit, and though the script makes the point over and over that he's an expert and passionate games player, the few toys scattered about the stage are an inadequate follow-through. And the staging keeps getting in the actors' way. Taylor and Gould play an important scene upstage, hemmed in by the furniture, and on more than one occasion Taylor has an emotional moment sitting behind his desk, where books and other adornments block his face from the audience. There's heat coming off the actors, yet nothing in the show works quite right. And unfortunately, you can't do a play like Sleuth unless you make it gleam, because all it has is style.