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''Private Eyes'' is a 1996 drama by Steven Dietz about deception and broken trust, labeled by the author as a "comedy of suspicion", as the story is brought in multiple layers and the audience is repeatedly tricked to believe that the current situation is real. It is sometimes considered an homage to Tom Stoppard's 1982 ''The Real Thing'', a play with the same theme and techniques. ==Story== Husband and wife Matthew and Lisa are rehearsing a two- or perhaps three-person play. The British director Adrian uses his position of power to instantly seduce the "strikingly beautiful" Lisa and for a month or so Matthew desperately tries to deny their brazenly open affair or fantasizes about revenge. Then, Adrian's wife Cory tracks him down and Lisa turns out to be just another notch on his belt, after which all go their separate ways. In the brief final scene, Lisa approaches Matthew many years later, both declaring to have thought about only each other ever since. This simple storyline is hidden in multiple, often conflicting layers, leaving the audience with doubts what part to believe (and some may even doubt the outline above). Like the beginning of Stoppard's play, the first scene is revealed to be the play the couple is rehearsing, with the additional twist that this play-in-a-play is about an audition and an affair between a director and an actress. The entire first half turns out to be a wistful version of how Matthew would have liked to expose the affair of his wife, as told to his therapist Frank (whose role can be played by a man or woman). Frank sometimes speaks to the audience, coming to its rescue in especially confusing situations, and presenting him/herself as the only one it can really trust. However, perhaps he/she is not a real character but merely a metaphorical tool to reveal the internal struggles of both Matthew and Lisa (who also has taken Frank as her therapist), an idea enhanced by Frank's last narration that turns out to be an audition for Matthew. In the second act, we get a retelling of the events (by Matthew to Frank) from the beginning of the affair. This still non-linear process deteriorates slowly into several nightmarish scenes with Lisa letting her husband leave the rehearsal room (so Adrian can make love to her) or Matthew getting scolded by his wife and Adrian after being forced to watch them in bed. Comedic relief is provided by the appearance of Cory, who initially introduces herself as a "private eye" for Adrian's suspecting wife. Her violent revenge may also just be a fantasy as we're told that the bullet she fired "only" grazed Adrian's heart and he took a flight back to England, presumably to continue his predatory ways. Although each layer by itself is deceptively plausible, the play takes several turns that make events in previous layers and sometimes even the overall story impossible. Examples of the latter are Frank's final audition and Cory featuring in Matthew's first account to Frank as an unlikely accomplice in his fantasized revenge before he meets her in a higher layer of the story. Such "plot holes" could be considered nods to Stoppard's play and the theater of the absurd. Dietz's use of comedic moments throughout the play, like the characters' unnatural wittiness, absurd but cathartic turns of events, and unexpectedly banal plays on words like Frank and "private Dick" has been suggested to be "because only a comedy can make us realize the truths we are not fond of".〔Josh Nichols (Sweet little lies ) Review in the Daily Nebraskan (1999)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Private Eyes (play)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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