DANGEROUS GAMES: Michael Praed and Simon MacCorkindale in Sleuth at the Theatre Royal Bath this week
WHEN Anthony Shaffer was trying to get his first play performed at the end of the 1960s, a leading West End producer predicted it wouldn't last a fortnight.
Nearly 40 years later Sleuth is still playing to packed houses, intriguing, baffling and delighting its audiences.
Michael Praed and Simon MacCorkindale are the protagonists in this tense masterpiece.
They clearly enjoy every moment of the cat and mouse manoeuvring, and the robust physicality of it.
Nothing is quite what it seems. Old fashioned detective fiction writer Andrew Wyke (MacCorkindale), with a predeliction for elaborate games, has invited Milo Tindle (Praed) to his house to discuss Milo's relationship with Wyke's estranged wife.
She is clearly a high maintenance woman and Wyke suggests a preposterous plot to give Milo enough money to support her and to put a tidy sum in his own pocket too.
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Wyke clearly doesn't care about his wife leaving him - he would have us all believe he is a Don Juan with plenty of admirers to satisfy him.
Sleuth, By Anthony Shaffer, Theatre Royal Bath
But the mood changes and master crime fiction plotter and games player Wyke has another agenda for Milo which involves deep humiliation and terror.
What he fails to take into account, while he mocks Milo's Italian ancestry is the Italian compulsion for revenge, which unfolds deliciously as Wyke finds himself quaking on the receiving end of a meticulously planned wind-up.
Mr MacCorkindale couldn't be further from his Casualty persona as consultant Harry Harper.
Wyke is assured, devious and a bully. He is racist and supercilious, but he is also witty and clever, and the actor builds the tension until it crackles.
Mr Praed has an even more demanding role, without giving away too much of the corkscrew plot, taking on more than one guise and fulfilling each with consummate skill.
It runs at Bath until Saturday. Even if you have seen it before, don't miss this production.
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