Collector's Corner: It's All in the Details! (feat. David Tennant's The Real Inspector Hound/Black Comedy (1998)
Earlier this afternoon, I was spending a few hours scanning some David Tennant theatre programmes into my Tropy archive (as you do, if you're a Triple Class Geek like me).
I was scanning in the set of three programmes I own from David's 1998 play, The Real Inspector Hound/Black Comedy - two from its run at the Comedy Theatre, and one from its run at the Richmond Theatre. Suddenly, something in one of the two programmes from the Comedy Theatre jumped out at me and I had to pull out the other one from the Comedy to make a comparison.
And there it was. Something I had somehow completely missed. And then, of course, I had to comb thoroughly through both of them to make sure I hadn't missed anything else. D'oh!
But ya know, it made me think I should share this whole journey. It's not only a perfect teaching moment for programme collectors — it's also a great peek into my research process.
If you’ve followed me here at A Tennantcy To Act for a bit, you might recall I did a write-up on this double-bill back in Oct 2023, covering its three runs: 🎭 Yvonne Arnaud Theatre 🎭 Richmond Theatre 🎭 Comedy Theatre (now the Harold Pinter)
If you weren't subscribed to me back then or happened to miss it when it came out, you can catch up here:
For today’s dig into DT’s theatre career, let’s have a chat about the 1998 double-billed plays The Real Inspector Hound and Black Comedy, sh
Now I've known for a long time that the play's run at the Comedy Theatre was originally set to end in mid-July 1998. For some reason it got extended into early August (probably due to its popularity, but I can't be certain of this). I mentioned the run's extension in the post I just linked above.
But here’s what I didn’t know until today:
There are actually two different programmes from that Comedy Theatre run, not just one!
Their front covers look identical, so at first glance they're the same:
But you have to dig deeper into the programmes themselves to see some subtle differences.
One change? The Resident Director credit:
And here’s the tiniest, nerdiest, most satisfying detail...
One of the last pages is a list of theatre staff and creatives. The very bottom of this page is where the sneaky little update lives — its publication date.
See it?
These small print changes confirm one programme was printed when the initial Comedy Theatre run began in April 1998, and the other programme was printed as a result of the extended run which began in mid-July and ended in August 1998.
Now I'm not saying it's a hard and fast rule that every run extension of a play triggers another programme print run. I suppose this all depends on such things as whether the cast or crew changed between runs (as was the case in David's 1995 play, What The Butler Saw), or how many programmes they had left at the end of the original run.
The moral of the story? Check your programmes ~very~ carefully, cover to cover. Details like a single name swap or a date line can be the key to unlocking a whole run history.
If I hadn’t already known about the extension of the run, these tiny changes would’ve (hopefully!) helped tip me off.
This is what I absolutely love about archival work — it’s part history, part detective story.
If you’re into deep-cut Tennant theatre history (like what I've just explained in excruciatingly delightful detail!) you’ll find loads more like this on my Substack.
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Hi! I'm Patricia Browning, and I write about obscure (and not-so obscure) facets of David Tennant's work and career. My particular passion i
