New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme
The cast in this four-person capsule telling of the Conan Doyle thriller bring vigour and charm but it’s hard to discern any point to the exercise
To get the measure of how tiresome this Sherlock Holmes adaptation is, you just have to think of its antecedents. The joke is that there are only four actors to represent the famous detective, his sidekick John Watson, various members of the Baskerville family, plus servants, neighbours and yokels, not to mention number 221B Baker Street, windswept moorland a country pile. The impossibility of achieving such a task comes at the expense of theatre itself: the shaky props, the hasty costume changes and the over-stretched stage manager.
Laughing at the medium is an old idea. But when, say, Victoria Wood did it in Acorn Antiques, she had a reason. Yes, daytime TV soaps were an easy target for satire, but a target nonetheless. And when the National Theatre of Brent attempted two-man epics such as Wagner’s Ring Cycle or The Messiah, the crazy ambition was funny in itself.
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