A scene from The Real Inspector Hound

Theatrecian?s The Real Inspector Hound and The Respectful Prostitute prove that this young group has managerial skills and enough depth on the bench to prepare and present two new productions within a fortnight ? a rare accomplishment that even our most experienced amateur troupes do not dare attempt. Curiously, despite the obvious differences between Stoppard and Sartre, the plays share some interesting similarities. Both rank among the minor works by their respective authors, so are not all that well known. Therefore, Theatrecian can also take credit for exposing audiences to unfamiliar scripts.

Unlike typical full-length Stoppard, relishing intellectual acrobatics, Inspector Hound is just good fun. Still, Stoppard can never stay away from metatheatricality, so he travesties not only the conventions of the murder mystery but also that bete noire of theatricians ? the drama critic, two of whom watch the whodunit unfold and then, in a delightful crossing of the line between life and theatre, get themselves entangled in happenings on stage. The director, Dhruv Mookerji, captures this spirit with a corpse sticking out under the curtain, cliched ?suspense? sound effects at predictable moments, and generally sending up the genre.

He could have made the reviewers (Aniruddha Maitra and Deborshi Barat) more effective by having them sit and speak in the front row, thereby further discomfiting others of their tribe, like myself. Roshni Bose and Nandini Das (the rival heroines), Bikram Ghosh as the apparently crippled major, Soumyak Kanti De Biswas as the clueless inspector and Dana Roy as the chilly housekeeper impress the most.

Sartre attacked American duplicity by showing the racist establishment brainwashing a prostitute to testify against a black man as the scapegoat for a rape committed by a WASP youth. Tanusree Das directs realistically, though without Yankee accents. Most of the impact comes from debutants Anoorupa Bose, remarkably free in the title role, and Bobby Chakraborty, who gives the smooth-talking senator a suavely crafty manner. Deborshi Barat enacts his hypocritical son with an ease derived from his astonishingly prolific recent stage appearances. Tathagata Chowdhury portrays the black victim with terror and a convincing limp, but his makeup rubs off within minutes.