ANTHONY Shaffer's Sleuth began life as a savagely satirical mystery thriller in 1970, transferred to the silver screen with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in 1972 and was subjected to a wholly unnecessary remake by Kenneth Branagh with Caine and Jude Law and a script by Harold Pinter in 2007.
It returns to the stage in 2016 in a West Yorkshire Playhouse and Nottingham Playhouse co-production that may be billed as "theatre most cunning" but cannot disguise how dated it now feels under Giles Croft's arch, melodramatic direction.
In turn, the cast of Miles Richardson and James Alexandrou overplay it as they stretch awkwardly in the dark, unable to settle on a tone. They could be playing it earnestly, they could be playing it as a send-up; one could be doing the former, the other the latter, simultaneously, but it is never clear which is intended.
James Alexandrou as Milo Tindle in Sleuth. Picture: Robert Day
Where Agatha Christie's thrillers have wit, intrigue, appealing characters and twists and turns conducted with a light sleight of hand, Sleuth feels as heavy as dough from the off, with sour lead roles and Shaffer's irredeemably nasty, twisted attitudes towards women, Italians and staff below stairs that may once have passed for comedy but don't anymore.
Richardson's aristocratic detective novelist Andrew Wyke is insufferably vainglorious, even eating smugly in his Wiltshire country house, done out like a fairground house of fun, where he prefers the company of spooky automata, such as the ever-laughing Jolly Jack Tarr, to that of his wife.
Her lover, Milo Tindle (Alexandrou), a cocksure hairdresser of Italian roots, has come to the big house to ask Wyke to relinquish her to him, and Wyke will do so if Milo can be persuaded to fake a jewellery robbery in an insurance scam. Let the games begin...and then drag on as they try to out-trick each other but fail to maintain tension or sustain the viewer's interest.
Playing games: James Alexandrou and Miles Richardson in Sleuth. Picture: Robert Day
Alexandrou, best known for his EastEnders role as Martin Fowler, looks ill at ease in a struggling stage production until finding his feet in the second half; Richardson has the thankless task of playing the kind of mocking, sadistic English toff that no-one feels nostalgic towards.
Only Jolly Jack Tarr, designer Barney George and the compiler of the trick-playing cast list in the programme are having any fun here. George's clever design is full of tricks and surprises, much like Sleuth in its heyday but not any more. Why it is being staged at all is the only mystery.
Sleuth, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until October 15. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk
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