2010/11 Season

Heart's Desire

"Heart's Desire" is a kitchen sink drama about a middle class couple awaiting the arrival of their grown daughter from Australia. Through slapstick, sometimes sassy dialogue, Alice and Brian, along with Brian's sister, Maisie, take the audience along an adventure of unanticipated, bizarre events as the play leads them into alternative series of developments. As the play repeatedly returns to the beginning, additional characters appear in the story, taking us down different paths, tweaking the course of the plot with their presence. Amongst these amusing and seemingly unstructured turns of events, it is through more seriously-toned slices between moments of absurdity that a truth is revealed. Waiting, as Maisie says on a number of occasions, is hard, and it constitutes much of what it means to be human. The randomness that makes up Heart's Desire is an expression of fears, concerns, and expectations with which most of us fill that period of waiting.

The Real Inspector Hound

"The Real Inspector Hound" follows two theatre critics, Moon and Birdboot, who while observing an absurd setup of a country house, "whodunit" murder mystery become involved in the action, causing a series of events that parallel the play they are watching. Though the play is set in a theatre, the play within the play is set in Muldoon Manor, an elaborate mansion in the middle of "desolate marshes" and "treacherous swamps." With this play, Stoppard delves into the ideas of fate and free will, as well as exploring the themes that stem from a play within a play. It is characteristic of Stoppard as a playwright with his use of absurdism, parody, and satire.