By SUSAN MCCABE
For The Beachcomber

The Vashon High School theater arts class has taken on a real challenge with its production of playwright Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound.”

This play not only keeps the audience wondering whodunit, it keeps us trying to figure out what it is. In fact, the dead body lying on the stage throughout the play — portrayed remarkably well by Axel Chellberg — has only a passing influence on the progress of the story.

It isn’t until the farcical close of the 70-minute production that it becomes clear this is Stoppard’s ultimate revenge on theater critics. To reveal that ending would spoil the audience experience. But from the start, the action on stage is secondary to the repartee between two stage critics set prominently stage left. Birdboot and Moon, two imbecilic theater critics, aptly rendered by Xavier Ajeto and Isaac Hughes, show little interest in the play as they are enthralled with their own conversation about Birdboot’s romantic life and Moon’s obsession with a rival critic. These two young actors play well off each other, maintaining a sense of British comic timing, especially as their mutual hysteria builds.

British sensibilities and accents are quite deliberately part of the tutorial director Stephen Floyd is applying to this theater arts play. All the cast members were directed to speak with British accents, and each appears to have chosen a regional inflection to fit their character. Joy Ghigleri does a delightful slight Cockney accent as the nosy maid Mrs. Drudge. Her deadpan facial responses also serve the play’s comic flow. Sarah Raymond, as the ravishing Lady Cynthia Muldoon, maintains her dry London accent and countenance to successfully create a caricature of duplicitous British nobility.

Maijah Sanson-Frey plays the foil to Raymond’s Lady Cynthia flashing appropriately insincere amazement at every turn, while Quinn McTighe, as the rakish stranger, is himself ultimately sacrificed to the plot within the plot of the play within the play.

The comic timing and plot twists are ably filled out by Miles Wingett as Major Magnus Muldoon and Jevne Meyers as Inspector Hound. These two have some of the best physical comedy opportunities in the entire play, and they pull them off well. The complexity of this comic/melodrama/farce requires that the audience pay close attention to the dialogue, especially with the minimal amplification available in the new Vashon High School theater.

Set against a backdrop created by the multi-talented Phil Dunn, “The Real Inspector Hound” is a real achievement both for the student performers and for their director.

The show runs again at 7:30 p.m. Friday and at 3 p.m. and Sunday. Tickets are $5 for everyone and are available at the VHS office, Vashon Bookshop or at the door.

— Susan McCabe is an island writer and Voice of Vashon’s station manager.