The Real Inspector Hound took place at the Criterion Theatre in London on 17 June 1968 with the cast as follows: Moon – Richard Briers Birdboot – Ronnie Barker Mrs. Drudge – Josephine Tewson Simon Gascoyne – Robin Ellis Felicity Cunningham – Patricia Shakesby Cynthia Muldoon – Caroline Blakiston Major Magnus Muldoon – Antony Webb Inspector Hound – Hugh Walters The play was directed by Robert Chetwyn, while the design was completed by Hutchinson Stott. Reception Clive Barnes of The New York Times dubbed The Real Inspector Hound "a perfect joy. Intellectually stimulating and civilized to just short of a fault, [...] The results are hilarious enough, but the froth leaves an oddly provocative aftertaste." Todd Everett of Los Angeles Times billed it as "a timeless farce" in 1992. A Chicago Reader reviewer wrote in 2010 that Stoppard's script "[opens] out beyond satire to express the strange elation, identification, and even erotic fascination any audience member can feel in the dark." The Telegraph's Charles Spencer said that The Real Inspector Hound "brilliantly nails the clichés of the reviewer's craft and the bitter jealousies of this grubby profession". Spencer said the play "[sends] up hackneyed thrillers and terrible acting with a winning mixture of sly humour and palpable affection." The Guardian's Michael Billington wrote that "Stoppard pins down perfectly the critical tendency towards lofty pronouncements [...] Stoppard also plays brilliantly on the spectator's secret desire to enter the house of illusion", praising the scene when Birdboot crosses the footlights. The critic joked, "If I weren't so scared of sounding like the pretentious Moon, I'd say Stoppard's play is a minor comic masterpiece about the theatrical process." Celia Wren of The Washington Post called it "a brilliant parody" with a "delectably language-drunk, hall-of-mirrors world." In 2012, Anna Lively of The Cambridge Student said that the work "has all the wit and originality that we expect from Tom Stoppard’s plays. [...] it subverts the familiarity of the murder mystery into a satisfyingly complex metatheatrical comedy." The Tab's Jamie P. Robson dubbed The Real Inspector Hound "an intricate pleasure [...] Myriad elements of the job are fantastically satirised: the bombast, the pretentiousness, the over-intellectual analyses". Robson argued that it "escalates into chaotic brilliance [...] when the critics step through the fourth wall [...] the unstoppable progress of the play-within-the-play to its twist-filled ending is as hilarious as it is magnetic." In 2016, Kate Wingfield