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Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band Venue 5 – Son of
Warehouse
Putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat, my
suspicion with this production is that the actors couldn't decide whether to play
Sherlock Holmes straight up, or turn it into a comedy, so they tried to do
both and wound up doing neither very well. There is so much
wrong with this play that it is difficult to know where to start. Alan Fehr plays Watson and the sister of the murdered
woman. As Watson, he is completely uninteresting, speaking in a
conversational manner that could hardly be
called acting. As the sister he speaks with a preposterous,
vaguely Southern accent, and overacts so much that it is difficult to
concentrate on what he is saying. Ashley Toews
as Sherlock Holmes is somewhat more assured, but still barely changes
her tone or slightly smug expression throughout, giving no indication
that one of the greatest minds in history is sorting through the clues and
solving the mystery. The script is hopeless, opening with the characters
repeating the phrase "knocked up" several times before Watson
catches the meaning, and proceeding at one point to Holmes and Watson playing
twenty questions while they wait for a signal. In the first
scene featuring Holmes and the murdered woman's sister, she treats
him with disdain, and in their next scene together
inexplicably begins hitting on him in a most lecherous manner. Add to
this a monotonous voice over being employed twice for exposition, and an
interminably long scene where the lights are dimmed and a clock ticks while
the actors on stage do nothing, and you begin to get some idea of the
problems with the script. I recently saw an interview with Gore Vidal
where he was asked about his doing reviews, and he stated he did them
"only to praise". Inspired by this I resolved to find
something good to say in all of my reviews. The best I can come up with
for this production is that it only costs five bucks (if you see it
during a matinee), and the actors don't take themselves too seriously. - Terry Moor UMFM |
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