*Adapted from the novel_
THE WEST END HORROR_
by Nicholas Meyer_
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID ABOUT THE WORLD PREMIERE:
"The Artful Dodges!" - NICHOLAS MEYER
"…a perfect theater piece… whimsical theater wizardries… the entire cast is
dazzling … with aplomb and style…high good fun…" - SOUTHAMPTON PRESS"… a dashingly clever play… a dashingly clever production…
expect two hours of sophisticated fun" - NY NEWSDAY"… wicked, witty fun… superbly conceived and
executed…an East End delight!" - THE INDEPENDENT"This Horror's A Beauty… The Dodge's are extremely clever playwrights…
wonderfully original and fast paced… the most inventive play
that has graced the Bay Street stage to date…
the words are witty and engaging…cunning and multi-dimensional.
Bravo, Bay Street!" - SAG HARBOR EXPRESS"… delicious!… witty and full of surprises…
Here, in Sag Harbor, we can forget for two hours the anxieties and
enjoy the talents of a seasoned company…" - EAST HAMPTON STAR"The murder of a despicable critic might be something to be cheered,
because it brings the world's most famous detective back to work... humorously clever Marcia Milgrom Dodge gives the show a theatrical flair. . ."
- SARASOTA HERALD TRIBUNE
THE REVIEWS ARE IN FROM THE ASOLO THEATRE PRODUCTION!
There's no mystery, 'Sherlock Holmes' is terrific
by JACK EDDLEMAN
Special to the HeraldHang on to your hats, "the games afoot" and we're off on another adventure, with "Sherlock Holmes and the West End Horror," currently having its southeast premiere at the Asolo Theatre.
A merry, madcap mixture of mystery, murder and mayhem, it's the brilliantly inventive brainchild of authors Anthony Dodge, and his wife, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, who also directs with a perfect blend of controlled chaos and wild abandon.
For Marcia Milgrom Dodge, the pianist acts, the scenery acts, the lighting acts, and, boy, do the actors act. Swapping gender and accents with the flick of a wrist, eight actors play 34 roles with polish and glee. Rarely have I seen such exuberant versatility in a company of actors - and only three are card-carrying members of Actors Equity. What a delicious romp the cast and the audience are having.
Set in 1895, in London's fashionable theater district, the plot concerns two rather bizarre murders - one of a theater critic (egad!) and the other, the ingenue for the D'Oyly Carte season of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. Along with Richard D'Oyly Carte, W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, there are appearances by other theatrical and literary luminaries of the day, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, "Dracula" author Bram Stoker, and the great actors Sir Henry Irving and Dame Ellen Terry. They are all tossed into this glorious goulash of a play with such gleeful dexterity it will take your breath away. The thrill of watching skilled actors changing not only wigs and costumes, but their very silhouette, is exhilarating.
Heading the honor roll is Richard B. Watson as Holmes, full of focused kinetic energy and vocal histrionics that sound like a full symphony orchestra in his throat. It is bravura, brilliant and absolutely right for the theatrical hodge-podge concocted by the Dodges. His demented "Martha Grahamish" ballet to Dr. Watson's recitation of the murder scene description is the height of imagination. Holmes' slow burn on the word "murder" and his perfectly timed and inflected "Had he any enemies?" is comic acting of the first order.That solid pro James Clark is sterling as a younger, more virile Dr. Watson, with a special twinkle in his eye. His full-time job as Holmes' sidekick makes him the only member of the cast not playing multiple roles. The ever-reliable Douglas Jones is a one-man repertory company all by himself: the prim and proper housekeeper, Mrs. Watson; the flamboyant producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte; flouncing and fluttering about as the great Ellen Terry; and Dr. Brownlow among others - all indelible cameos.
Ken Ferrigni was happiest in his George Bernard Shaw impersonation, with red beard and knickers, gleaning ideas for his future plays (he is a critic (egad!) at the time). Who knew that Sherlock Holmes was the inspiration for Henry Higgins of "Pygmalion"/"My Fair Lady" fame? Ferrigni also did well singing Bunthorne's aria from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience," and had a lot of fun with the rhetoric and bombast of the Shakespearean legend, Sir Henry Irving.
The imposing Arlyn Mick had great success with his effete Oscar Wilde, in a red velvet dressing gown and laurel wreath; as police surgeon Dr. Benjamin Eccles; and as a defensive suspect, composer Sullivan. That bundle of energy, Aaron Kliner made striking appearances as the ever-efficient Inspector Lestrade; as an amorous W.S. Gilbert; and several frightening revelations in a ticket booth as the scary Stoker.
Deanna Gibson, the evening's only genuine female, plays victim number two, Jessie Rutland, with Victorian grace and a lovely soprano on "Love Is A Plaintive Song" another Gilbert and Sullivan ditty. She also does an early version of Eliza Doolittle; the ingenue in "Dracula"; Wilde's great love Bosie; and various other males and females with equal aplomb. Wayne Berman adds wonderful touches at the on-stage piano and contributes bits of character acting throughout.
Troy Hourie's moving set pieces contribute immensely to the evening's hilarity. With its stylized doorways, empty picture frames and newspaper floor, which Holmes constantly scrutinizes with his ever-present spy-glass, the set becomes another performance in this striking company. As does the lighting by James D. Sale with its mercurial changes, sharp pools and dramatic shadings. Solid. Pamela Scofield's superb costume designs match the Dodges theatricality for theatricality, illuminating character and class with a sharp eye for detail. Exemplary.
On stage sound effects by the actors - a creaking door, horses hooves and a crackling fire - are just the topper to a wickedly clever, brilliantly inventive evening of Theater, with a capital T.
Sherlock Holmes in Wonderland
Holmes tumbles into the world of the theater in new production at the Asolo.By Marty Fugate
Arts and Entertainment Editor
The Long Boat Observer 12/9/04The supreme fiction of "The West End Horror" is that Sherlock Holmes wasn't a fiction - that Holmes (and Dr. Watson, the detective's sidekick and best-selling penny-dreadful chronicler) rubbed corporeal elbows with George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, W.S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, Richard D'Oyly Carte, Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells in the Victorian London of 1895. The reason Holmes and Watson keep bumping into all these real-world theater people is that someone else has been bumping off real-world theater people. That murderous someone began with a detestable theater critic and followed up with a pretty young actress. Struggling critic and would-be playwright Shaw brought it to Holmes' attention and the challenge lured the great detective out of retirement. Now the game's afoot.
Husband-and-wife playwrights Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge adapted this play from Nicholas Meyer's novel of the same title, a not-too-serious sequel to "The Seven Percent Solution." Meyer's first Holmes novel, a tale of how Sigmund Freud helped the sleuth kick cocaine, dug into the character's inner life. The follow-up stuck mainly to the outer world. It was basically a straight-up detective story stuffed with late Victorian name-dropping and lightly seasoned with loving satire. It also was great fun - as is this adaptation for the stage.
Some of that fun comes from treating Holmes and Watson as "real" characters, who are self-conscious of their fame and engage in the kind of banter you see between real friends. (There's a running joke in which Watson tells Holmes, "Enough already," when the detective launches into one of his show-offy deductions from trivial details.) There's also the fun of putting logical, left-brained Holmes and Watson in the emotional, right-brain world of writers and theater folk - with an added jolt of recognition to anyone familiar with the big names of the period. The plot is fun for its elaborate machinery of misdirection. Holmes fans smile because it's the sort of thing Arthur Conan Doyle would write. The satire is spot-on.
Both text and direction (by co-writer Marcia Milgrom Dodge) emphasize the artifice of the clockwork plot. The piano player supplies a soundtrack (bits of Saint-Saens, Gilbert and Sullivan and cliché snippets of the classics) at a piano that's in plain sight on stage. Actors do things like shout "bang" through megaphones when guns are being fired or make creaking sounds when doors are being opened. There's also the gimmick of dividing the play's 36 parts between five actors. The effect is like looking at one of those grandfather clocks in a transparent Plexiglas case - you can see the dramaturgical wheels turning at all times. You're never allowed to forget that it is a play. Good thing. Played straight, this story would be very sad. The post-modern gallimaufry keeps you laughing. Here's a look at the actors working the comic machinery. Don't look if you want to be surprised during the play. To avoid spoilers, skip directly to the last two paragraphs.
Still with me? OK ...
Holmes is played by Richard Watson (what are the odds, eh?), who wisely plays the character straight - essentially a straight man to the over-the-top characters of the theatrical demimonde he's tumbled into, like some logical Alice in an illogical Wonderland. Eschewing any hamming-it-up makes this comic strategy work. He's also sans cape or deerstalker.
James Clark is refreshingly not so fawning and obsequious as Dr. Watson, the central sidekick. As the writer who popularized the detective, he's got a little more clout than the detective himself in this world. More than a foil to Holmes' brilliance, Watson's a key to Holmes' bottom-line, and both Holmes and Watson know it.
Ken Ferrigni's Shaw is agreeably disagreeable - ready to launch into an anti-Shakespearean or pro-vegetarian tirade at the drop of a hat - but a smart, honest, funny man with a great sense of humor and no hidden agendas. Good company, in small doses. Shaw has much stagetime; Ferrigni only has to play a couple of other minor literary figures.
Aaron Kliner's range of personality types include the plodding Inspector Lestrade; the writing half of Gilbert and Sullivan; and Bram Stoker, the creepy, heroin-addicted, Goth-before-his-time author of "Dracula" before he got published; a victimizer who's also a victim.
Arlyn Mick's Wilde is a Pan-garlanded Lord of Misrule, holding court in what Victorian types used to call a "gentleman's club" and courting disaster by flaunting his flouting of convention. Mick's Wilde is more Roman than flamboyant, one of the less vicious but smarter Emperors with an artistic flair. Egoist or not, you sympathize with the character because you know he's doomed. His other schizoid selves include a cabbie, a cop, the composing half of Gilbert and Sullivan and a young H.G. Wells, a Sherlock Holmes fanboy who does wear a cape and deerstalker. (The young Wells has also donned an inexplicably inaccurate awright guv'ner cockney accent. A shopkeeper's son in a nation of shopkeepers, the solidly middle-class Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England.)
Deanna Gibson plays: Boise, Wilde's boyfriend; Achmed Singh, the poor murdered actress' wrongly imprisoned Indian boyfriend; Jessie Rutland, the poor murdered actress; and a host of other characters, including Shaw's inspiration for Eliza Doolittle. Gibson's portrayal of the doomed actress is one of the few times the play allows itself to be openly touching - though of course there's a tongue-in-cheek reference to Victorian sentimentality.
Aside from the few tears Gibson may inspire, most of the time you'll be laughing. When you are, it's often Douglas Jones who's responsible. His host of characters include: Holmes' landlady; Richard D'Oyly Carte, the oily theatrical promoter; Jonathan McCarthy, the villainous critic; Dracula; various literary and theatrical types; and the guy who made the sound of the creaking door. Seeing Jones whip in and out of his endless costume changes is like watching an old "Ed Sullivan" show rerun of that guy who kept hundreds of plates spinning on poles. You keep expecting to hear, "Enter the Gladiators."
This is a funny play, but more of a loving pastiche than a slashing satire. For all its exposed machinery, the mystery remains a good one. The play's characters are true to their real-life or fictional originals. Nicholas Meyer and Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge clearly know and love their Sherlock Holmes. And while you don't have to be an Arthur Conan Doyle addict to enjoy this play, it's a fair deduction that it helps. Sherlockians should get a kick out of this.
And, feel no urge to push either novelist, playwrights or actors over the Reichenbach Falls.
The Games' Afoot
Sherlock Holmes play opens at PTC next week.
By Ivan M. Lincoln
Deseret Morning News
When Pioneer Theatre Company's production of Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge's stage version of Nicholas Meyer's "Sherlock Holmes & The West End Horror" opens this week, it's not just a regional premiere — it's only the third production of the play since it premiered in 2002 at a small theater in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and at the renowned Asolo Theatre in Sarasota, Fla.
The adventurous mystery puts Holmes and confidant Dr. John Watson up against such true-life luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Sigmund Freud, Bram Stoker and even Gilbert & Sullivan — all of whom are potential suspects in the West End murder of a theater critic.
Co-author Marcia Milgrom Dodge is guest directing the PTC production.
During a telephone interview this past week shortly after arriving in Salt Lake City, she noted that during one of the first read-through sessions with the script, during the fall of 2000, at the end of the reading an actress asked "if Sherlock Holmes really knew all these people."
The group reading the script was so charged up, apparently the young woman forgot that Holmes and Watson are fictional characters.
"What we hope (for the play) is that if you're a real theater lover, you are going to have a blast because of all your heroes coming to life on stage," said Dodge. "It's set in Victorian England, but it's still very much the way people are today."
And a large part of the fun for theatergoers will be seeing a cast of only seven performers playing nearly 35 characters between them. They'll swap costumes, accents and even gender in the blink of an eye.
Three of the cast come to Salt Lake City from previous productions of the play — Richard Watson played Sherlock Holmes in the Florida production and Mark Shanahan and Jennifer Waldman were, respectively, Oscar Wilde and the sultry, mysterious Jessie Rutland, in the Long Island premiere.
Joining them are Max Robinson as Watson, Craig Wroe (most recently seen in PTC's "Metamorphoses") as Lestrade, Kevin Doyle of Logan as impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte and guest artist Kurt Zischke as George Bernard Shaw, with local musician Steven Barlow as The Pianist.
All of the players except Barlow have an "etc." after each of their main characters' names. (Howard Millman, producing artistic director at the Asolo Theatre, noted in 2004 that "this play is . . . wonderful fun as the audience not only tries to solve the crime, but also to determine which of the players is playing whom from scene to scene.")
This is not your run-of-the-mill mystery.Dodge commented that, 10 years ago, her husband, Anthony, handed her a copy of Meyer's novel and said they should adapt it for the stage.
"I was a big fan of his 'Seven-Percent Solution' and it was so imaginative, to put Holmes with Freud, etc., and mixing up these characters and luminaries of the day. It just seemed like the perfect thing to adapt. In my naivete, I tracked down Meyer's literary agent and called him about turning it into a play," Dodge said.
During the script's workshop process the Dodges landed on the theatrical style of the play and the element of using a minimal number of actors to portray all of the speaking roles, with just a piano for the underscoring.
"We had a 99-seat company ready for the fall of 2001, then the world changed, so I sent out e-mails to every theater I had ever worked at, and the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor first produced it in 2002," she said.
Dodge had been talking to Pioneer Theatre Company artistic director about the play off and on, and they were able to fit it into the October slot for PTC 2005-06 season. She mentioned that she walked into the Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre and began counting seats — noting that, at just under 1,000 seats, the venue is considerably larger than the previous two venues where "Sherlock Holmes" had played.
"But I've been a director for 30 years. I just go make plays and I'm very excited," she said, adding that she and her husband's goals for the play "have always been modest — that it's really a regional project."
"I'm a bit of a gypsy," said Dodge. "I started out as a choreographer, which I worked at exclusively from about 1977 to '86 or so, then moved into directing. I tend to both direct and choreograph. My style is very physical and even Holmes will dance a bit; that's just the way I work."
"This play really moves with the energy of a musical. I love to direct plays, especially mysteries and melodramas — I love the heightened behavior," she said.
Dodge and her husband are the parents of an adopted daughter, Natasha, who came to Utah for the extended Columbus Day holiday weekend, but won't be back out for the opening.
"We're embarking on a new chapter. Anthony has curtailed his acting so one of us will always be home with our daughter. He's an amazing father and I'm a freelance director and I just go where the work is," she said.
Scenery for the production will be by guest designer Troy Hourie, who has several off-Broadway credits, with costumes by PTC's resident designer Carol Wells Day.
