Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✩✩
by Steven Dietz, directed by Ted Dykstra
Theatre Aquarius, Dofasco Centre, Hamilton
September 23-October 8, 2011
“Sherlock in Love”
The main reason to see Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure is to enjoy two outstanding performances--Geordie Johnson in the title role and Ashley Wright as his trusted companion Dr. Watson. Otherwise, the show is just a bit of fluff--an homage to the famous sleuth that is more concerned to fit in every cliché about him than in exploring the character or in generating dramatic tension.
Steven Dietz’s play from 2006 claims it is based on William Gillette’s famous 1899 play Sherlock Holmes that helped increase the public demand for more Holmes stories after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had killed off the detective in 1893. Some will remember that the Shaw Festival revived Gillette’s play in 1994 with Jim Mezon as Holmes, Robert Benson as Watson and Michael Ball as Moriarty,
Dietz, however, only uses the skeleton of Gillette’s play that he fleshes out with his own attempt to link the stories “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891) and “The Final Problem” (1893). Unlike Gillette’s play, Holmes’s arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty appears throughout the action which concludes with Holmes’s struggle with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls that leads to their presumed deaths. Like Gillette, Dietz is not content with Doyle’s depiction of a celibate Holmes and decides to have him fall in love. In Gillette, his avowal of love for his client Alice Faulkner concludes the drama. In Dietz, his avowal of love for an intended victim, Irene Adler, occupies one scene in Act 2.
Act 1 that focusses completely “A Scandal in Bohemia” is the more satisfying. The King of Bohemia (Richard Clarkin) comes to see Holmes in order to retrieve a compromising photograph of himself and his former lover, the opera singer Irene Adler (Daniela Vlaskalic) before it can be used to upset his forthcoming marriage to a Scandinavian princess. It transpires that Irene is not the one who wants to blackmail the King, but Irene’s new husband James Larrabee (Murray Furrow) and his sister Madge (Shauna Black), who are member of the criminal organization led by Professor Moriarty (Mark Caven).
The story of the photograph ought to be over when Holmes finds it, but for obscure reasons the photograph winds up again in the hands of the Larrabees who then uses it to lure Holmes into the gas chamber trap taken from Gillette’s play. While the set-up for the trap is elaborate, Holmes’s avoidance of danger is so easy as to be disappointing.
The role of Irene Adler also should end in Act 1, but Dietz has her insist that she has unfinished business with the King and must accompany Holmes and Watson to the Continent. This makes no sense because she earlier claimed that she would not blackmail the King with the photo and Holmes has already praised her for this reason. Dietz’s contrivance, of course, is to get Irene to Reichenbach Falls to witness with Watson the events there. He also uses her presence for quite an awkwardly written scene where Holmes attempt to confess his love for the singer by giving her treatises on arcane subjects. If Holmes were to fall in love, it seems far more likely that he would announce it to a woman simply as a matter of fact rather than embarrassing himself as Dietz imagines.
Geordie Johnson makes for a very dashing Holmes. He has that quality of Jeremy Brett in the famed Granada television series of seeming to be thinking several steps ahead of what he is actually telling those around him. He communicates Holmes’s intensity and quicksilver temperament perfectly. Ashley Wright is a wonderfully warm Dr. Watson. It’s difficult to make an ordinary good-hearted person interesting on stage, but Wright accomplishes this through the concern he has for Holmes as a friend and through the urgency he lends his role as narrator.
Of the other characters the most impressive is Mark Caven, who plays Moriarty as a kind of Nosferatu-like being--gaunt but physically powerful with an unusually deep voice. As is true of fictional master criminals in general, one wonders why a man said to be Holmes’s intellectual equal employs such oafish people to carry out his plans. Murray Furrow makes Larrabee into such a clown it’s hard to see how someone as brilliant as Irene would ever consent to marry him. Shauna Black’s talents are pretty much wasted in the underwritten role of Madge whose main characteristic is smoking electronic cigarettes. Ron Pederson, however, hits the right note as the safecracker Sid Prince by managing to seem both comic and competent at once.
Daniela Vlaskalic manages to appear as forceful and perceptive as she is described, so much so we wonder why, Holmes excepted, she has such bad taste in men. Richard Clarkin is quite terrible as the King of Bohemia. Neither he nor director Ted Dykstra has kept in mind that Irene once thought him worthy of her love when they were young. Therefore he cannot be as aged and idiotic as Clarkin plays him. And he should really settle on an accent from at least one European country rather than taking us on a Cook’s tour in every sentence.
Designer Patrick Clark has dealt with the challenge of so many locations through clever means, both flying in decorated flats and using parallel sliding trucks to great effect, making the scene changes almost more exciting than the play. His costumes, particularly for Irene are beautifully detailed. All his work is enhanced by Louise Guinand’s lighting that is the prime factor in establishing atmosphere and mood.
Ted Dykstra’s direction is efficient but not as detailed or imaginative as it could be. Anyone unhappy with the decision to turn Holmes and Watson into action heroes in the recent movie, will be happy to see these iconic figures much more faithfully embodied in Johnson and Wright and they will certain approve of Caven as the mysterious Moriarty. It’s a pity the play is not better, but if one does come along, or indeed a new series, I’d certainly want to see these three in it.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Geordie Johnson as Sherlock Holmes. ©2011 Roy Timm.
For tickets, visit www.theatreaquarius.org.
2011-10-03
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure