Playwright: Anthony Shaffer
At: Organic Theater, 1125 W. Loyola
Phone: (773) 561-5600; $25-$30
Runs through: July 20
Sleuth, the cat and mouse, manor house, full-of-twists-and-turns thinking man’s mystery has been around for more than 30 years.
It spawned a well-received movie with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine; it was revived last year in London’s West End. Anthony
Shaffer (who is also well known for his screenplays Death on the Nile and Frenzy) crafted a script that manages to enthrall, delight,
chill, and give audiences something to think about in terms of the British class society, marriage, jealousy, envy, infidelity, revenge,
and more.
If you have never seen the film or a stage production, it would be unfair of me to give away too many plot points. Half the fun of
Sleuth is in the way it surprises, and manages to switch back on itself with yet another twist just when you think you have everything
figured out. The bare bones of the story deal with Andrew Wyke (Tony Mockus), an aristocratic author of British detective stories and
lover of games. He has invited a much younger man to his house for a visit. Milo Tindle (Tony Mockus, Jr.) lives in a different world
from the stodgy Wyke: he is a self-made man; his leisure pursuits are limited by financial and work constraints; and he comes from an
Italian immigrant background. He is everything that the upper class Wyke might sneer at. He is also having an affair with Wyke’s
younger wife. Wyke has called Tindle to his manor house to discuss Tindle’s suitability as a future husband and provider for his
current spouse. It’s the provider issue that leads Wyke to propose a dangerous and criminal plan. And it’s this criminal plan that sets
in motion a chain of events that leaves blood on the carpet, gunshots, visits from detectives, and more plot twists than you can dream
of.
Organic Theater Company, under the direction of Ina Marlowe, has done a well-crafted job with Shaffer’s script. The gimmick of
casting the father and son Mockus acting team is beside the point. What is to the point is that both men acquit themselves admirably
in bringing to life a pair of characters who are each diabolical and cunning in their own way. The elder Mockus’ Wyke is an archaic
dinosaur: a last, slightly distasteful remnant of British gentry society. Mockus plays him with a mixture of bravado, entitlement, and, in
his finest moments, fear and uncertainty. He gets across well that Wyke lives only for games … and possessions. At one point, he tells
Tindle—in reference to why he wants to keep his wife—that a man has a right to ‘have his cookie and ignore it.’ Mockus, Jr.’s
performance is more understated, but no less compelling. His Tindle, on the surface, seems like the fresh-faced young go-getter, a
polar opposite of Wyke. But as the play moves into increasingly dangerous territory, Mockus Jr. peels back the layers of his character
to reveal a more than able match in the deadly game being played out in Sleuth.
Credit also Joseph Glueckert for an inspired set that captures, in detail, a British manor house and Ina Marlowe, a director who
understands something about suspense … and the more unsavory aspects of human nature.