The Browning Version and The Real Inspector Hound

The Browning Version is Terence Rattigan’s moving drama about an aging English schoolmaster coming to grips with his personal and professional failures. As the preparations for his and his wife’s imminent departure come to a head, we learn he has had a bitter, harsh life, full of disappointments and shattered illusions. A simple gift from one of his pupils proves to him that not all his efforts have been in vain.

The Real Inspector Hound is Tom Stoppard’s hilarious send-up of murder mysteries and English theatre critics. It is set in a London theatre during a performance of “Murder at Muldoon Manor,” a play within a play. At the center is a simple murder – the victim already dead when the play begins. As the pointedly brainless and shallow play within a play progresses – two critics that are in the audience become part of the action on stage in a plot with more twists and curves than a winding mountain road!