Feuding theatre critics Moon and Birdfoot, the first a fusty philanderer and the second a pompous and vindictive second stringer, are swept into the whodunit they are viewing. In the hilarious spoof of Agatha Christie-like melodramas that follows, the body under the sofa proves to be the missing first string critic. As mists rise about isolated Muldoon Manor, Moon and Birdfoot become dangerously implicated in the lethal activities of an escaped madman.-- from publisher's website.

Feuding theatre critics Moon and Birdfoot, the first a fusty philanderer and the second a pompous and vindictive second stringer, are swept into the whodunit they are viewing. In the hilarious spoof of Agatha Christie-like melodramas that follows, the body under the sofa proves to be the missing first string critic. As mists rise about isolated Muldoon Manor, Moon and Birdfoot become dangerously implicated in the lethal activities of an escaped madman.

Culled from nearly twenty years of the playwright’s career, a showcase for Tom Stoppard’s dazzling range and virtuosic talent, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays is essential reading for fans of modern drama. The plays in this collection reveal Stoppard’s sense of fun, his sense of theater, his sense of the absurd, and his gifts for parody and satire. Includes: “The Real Inspector Hound” “After Margritte” “Dirty Linen” “New-Found-Land” “Dogg’s Hamlet” “Cahoot’s Macbeth”

Harris, his mother and his wife are a kooky trio. Enter the forceful inspector from Scotland Yard with his constable - which is strange, notes the wife, for she had ordered an ambulance. The officers proceed to place the three under arrest. It is not clear why; something about a parked car, a bunch of .22 caliber shells in the waste basket, and a robbery of the box office of a minstrel show. But Harris has an explanation: he had parked near an art gallery to let his mother see some paintings by Magritte in which her obsessional instrument, the tuba, figured grandly. But then it develops that there was no minstrel show at all, and the plot goes haywire. Performed in New York with The Real Inspector Hound.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour A dissident is locked up in an asylum. If he accepts that he was ill and has been cured, he will be released. He refuses. Sharing his cell is a real lunatic who believes himself to be surrounded by an orchestra. As the dissident's son begs his father to free himself with a lie, Tom Stoppard's darkly funny and provocative play asks if denying the truth is a price worth paying for liberty. 'Plays which enhance civilization itself, which is what this does, are not seen once and laid away.' Bernard Levin, Sunday Times Every Good Boy premiered at the Festival Hall, London, in July 1977. It was revived at the National Theatre, London, in January 2009. Professional Foul 'Professor Anderson, a somewhat devious academic, went to Prague to deliver a lecture on "Ethical Facts in Ethical Fiction" and to see a football match. Politics intruded when a former pupil of Anderson begged him to smuggle out a thesis arguing that "the ethics of the State can only be the ethics of the individual writ large." . . . Mr Stoppard's BBC television debut was sheer delight.' Richard Last, Daily Telegraph

This fifth collection of Tom Stoppard's plays brings together five classics by one of the most celebrated dramatists writing in the English language.