Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✭✭
written and directed by Chris Gibbs
Chris Gibbs, Toronto Fringe Festival, Glen Morris Studio Theatre, Toronto
July 6-14, 2006
This show* is a delight from beginning to end. Set in 1896 we meet Barnaby Gibbs (Chris Gibbs), a kind-hearted but thoroughly dim-witted young man whose hero is Sherlock Holmes’s companion, Doctor Watson. He thinks finds his Holmes in Antoine Feval, a criminal whose every act Gibbs misinterprets as part of sleuthing. The irony of this first-person limited narrative is deliciously funny, and the enthusiasm Chris Gibbs gives the painfully naïve Barnaby is infectious. Chris Gibbs’s observations on the show in progress add further layers of irony, making this one of the most cleverly written and performed shows I’ve ever seen at the Fringe.
*Since its Fringe debut, Gibbs has retitled the show Not Quite Sherlock.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-07-13.
Photo: Chris Gibbs as Antoine Feval. ©Kurt Firla.
2006-07-13
Antoine Feval