ANTHONY Shaffer’s thriller Sleuth is one of those extraordinary plays whose complexities are such that you forget the outcome, no matter how many times you see it – and that’s even WITH two famous film versions, one made in Dorset’s own Athelhampton House back in 1972 and starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.

Set firmly in the 70s, it’s the story of detective thriller writer Andrew Wyke, who has invited Milo Tindle, his wife’s much younger lover, round for a drink. Using his vast experience of (fictional) robberies, murders, mysteries and plodding policemen, Andrew has devised a plot by which Milo can make enough money to finance his new high-maintenance mistress and Andrew himself will be left enough cash to continue living in the magnificent country house where he dwells with his books, his games and his theatrical props.

But all, as you can imagine, is not as it seems.

Yeovil’s intimate Swan Theatre is famous not only for its wide variety of plays and deep, wide well of
acting talent, but also for its sets – and this one takes the Oscar-shaped biscuit. Designed by Sian Spencer, it is the most challenging and complex set ever built on the little stage. It took eight weeks of measuring, begging, borrowing, painting, blending, cutting and re-imagining by a determined crew of seven, and the outcome is simply stunning. A massive sweeping staircase winds its way up from the library – not, as is usual in “drawing room” productions, at the back of the set, but filling the stage with its grandeur.

It’s hard not to see this cleverly devised and brilliantly decorated edifice as the star of the show.

Robert Graydon returns to performing on the Swan stage after a longish period in the director’s chair, as the acerbic, posturing and scheming Wyke. This enormously demanding role calls not only for a full gamut of emotions from charm through manic glee and vicious cruetly to craven terror, but a large number of comic accents, delivered in a vast number of words.

Chris Williamson plays Milo, a character created by Caine with his unsheddable Cockney accent. Following in his footsteps as a “sarf London” wide boy, Milo’s assurance is rapidly broken by the suave machinations of his host, before long admitting to his fears of being able to keep Mrs Wyke in the style to which she has become accustomed. But neither policemen nor immigrants nor Cockneys are the dupes that Andrew Wyke believes them to be, and so the tables turn in this house of comic horrors.

Shaffer’s play retains its brilliant plotting for all its rather dated charm, and once again the Swan has given its devoted audience another humdinger production, on until Saturday with a handful of seats remaining.

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