The Suffield Players -- Photo Gallery/The Real Inspector Hound, page one

The Real Inspector Hound, May 2007, page one

The Muldoon Manor Set, a typical house in the English countryside. Prior to the play's start, two critics enter and take their seats in a special box, left.


Moon (Steve Wandzy) is "sitting in for Higgs tonight," and Birdboot (Bruce Showalter) is already writing his rather pompous review. With the play seeming to take forever to start, Moon and Birdboot comment loudly on everything.	Finally Frau Drudge (Kelly Seip) appears (shoved, actually) onstage to begin dusting everything interminably while the critics still comment. Drudge turns on the radio just in time to hear a police warning about an escaped madman in the area. What are the odds?

Just then mysterious stranger Simon Gascoyne (Robert Lunde) arrives and tells houseguest Felicity Cunningham (Vanda Doyle) that he must break up with her. She threatens to kill him.	Simon loves Cynthia Muldoon (Karen Balaska), the lady of the mansion, but she still hopes that her ten-years-missing husband Albert will be found. Cynthia threatens that if Simon is merely toying with her, she will kill him.

Simon's foot is run over by Major Magnus Muldoon (Roger A. Ochs), Albert's brother. He, too, cares for Cynthia and doesn't care for Simon at all.	Felicity re-enters and delights in telling Cynthia that she and Simon were together quite recently.

Simon and Cythia are partnered against Felicity and Magnus in a tension-filled game of cards. Simon wins and it appears his luck's in tonight, but "the night is not over yet."

It's intermission and the critics try to out-art each other in composing their reviews of the first act.