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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery
So, by my count, the list of disastrously failed recent comedies at the The New Jewish Theatre already included All Fall Down and Two Jews Walk into a War. But most of what the company turns out is actually truly brilliant and inspired, thanks to Artistic Director Rebekah Scallet and her board. However, Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery joins my prospective list of gutterballs and has no notable Jewish references in it at all. What it does have is a lot of references to something else, which we'll get to in a minute. Nisi Sturgis directs Baskerville with very good attention to pacing and comic formula, and her cast and crew are really quite delightful in the context of pure stagecraft. But they're not specifically comic actors. And they're on shaky ground as it is in a highly improbable adaptation of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," one of the most celebrated novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is, happily, your grandfather's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But it is not your grandfather's Baskerville. This stage mystery imports the residents of 221B Baker Street into the comic style of the great 2005 stage rewrite of The 39 Steps, along with a soupçon of the 1974 movie Young Frankenstein thrown in for dubious measure. As a result, Baskerville does indeed fill me with a kind of suspicion. Just not the kind I was hoping for. The two hour and fifteen minute play premiered at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. in 2015 in a limited run. This was ten years after the debut of a new adaptation of The 39 Steps, which Baskerville seems to resemble, at least structurally. The 39 Steps burst forth upon the stage at the West Yorkshire Playhouse a decade earlier, written by Patrick Barlow, and based on a concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon, which was based on the 1935 Hitchcock film, which in turn was based on a novel by John Buchan and originally set shortly before World War I. In the modern stage lampoon of The 39 Steps a trio of actors in a long list of roles creates comic mayhem for a man alone, trying to save his nation. Flash forward to now (ten, or even twenty years later) and this production of Ken Ludwig's Baskerville in St. Louis, where about a third of the people in attendance seemed to enjoy it just fine on opening night. And Nick Freed is very good, playing it by the book as Sherlock Holmes. The always intriguing Bryce A. Miller manages to smash out of the curse of a labored comedy here and there as Dr. Watson in a show that camps-up a classic novel serialized in The Strand magazine between late 1901 and early 1902. It may not sound important, but in this production there's also an accidental recurring theme of hats falling off bewigged actors at regular intervals. Somehow it adds a dose of spontaneity to the affair. Splendid Sean C. Seifert is heroic in creating a long list of resoundingly rendered characters from the original novel onto the stage. His greatest creation (possibly of all time) is here as a flighty lepidopterist. And I know actors grow tired of me heaping praise on them, but somehow he breaks through on every level in this smash-and-grab assortment. I kind of think his scenes with Alicia Revé Like need a growing friction of jealousy and competition though. Ms. Like is blazingly excellent, and goes through just as many ordeals of frantic costume changes. Plus she makes us fall in love with her as (among other things) a woman in trouble out on the moors of Devonshire, England. But they need more chemistry. John Wilson, in his St. Louis debut, is a genuinely remarkable presence as the American heir to the Baskerville fortune, after his (identical) brother falls victim to a strange beast lurking in the mists in scene one (this is the centuries-old curse that plagues Devonshire and Baskerville Hall). And Mr. Wilson, a long-time veteran of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, also shines as Holmes' glowering nemesis, Inspector Lestrade. Again, more chemistry, please–the two "main characters" here have such an insular relationship, the other three must tend to the flock of the room. Assistant director Sophia Urban, stage manager Monica Dickhens and assistant stage manager Gregory Carr II (and possibly others) all work backstage to help Ms. Like and Mr. Seifert race through a frantic list of costume changes, in what resembles a Marx Brothers type of routine, reimagined by the very serious Actors Studio. Each new little role is perfectly turned out, but the magic of clowning is often elusive. Maybe we should even get more of an occasional, furtive, backstage, G-rated glimpse of some of the hurried changes. As it is, these chickens never leave the roost. Playwright Ludwig has also written Moriarty: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, which I have not seen. But setting that one aside, you'd still be hard-pressed to name even a single good play about Sherlock Holmes to begin with, though Steppenwolf Theatre's Fake in Chicago was actually very well done when I caught it in 2009. In defense of my theory, however, Fake centered mainly on Conan Doyle himself, as written and directed by Eric Simonson. Regrettably, this all reminds me of Ludwig's other most-recently produced play in town, Sherwood, which ran this spring at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. In each, the brightest embers of comedy finally emerge in the actors' own interactions with the audience, in the manner of dinner theatre. Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery runs through December 7, 2025, at the Jewish Community Center, #2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.newjewishtheatre.org. Cast: Production Staff: * Denotes Member, Actors Equity Association |
