THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES To 15 August.
Nottingham
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
by Arthur Conan Doyle adapted by Nicholas Briggs.
Theatre Royal To 15 August 2009.
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2pm Sat 5pm.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICJKETS: 0115 989 5555.
www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
Review: Alan Geary 10 August.
Sent too far up but a cracking start to Nottingham’s Thriller Season all the same.
If you’ve been cowering at home sheltering from summer you can come out now. The annual Classic Thriller Season, by now an institution in Nottingham, is back with four plays at the Theatre Royal.
Reasonably enough, Colin McIntyre’s twenty-first season starts with some outrageously OTT music and a dog howling horribly; this is Conan Doyle’s classic, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Adapter Nicholas Briggs - himself playing Holmes as comically patronising and self-satisfied - makes it a play within a play. Dr Watson (Adrian Lloyd-James), who’s supposed to have written it, is putting the whole thing on at the Royal. This allows Holmes and Watson to maximise laughs by slipping, at various points, from inner play to outer. It also gives lots of scope for sending the original up; and up it is well and truly sent - occasionally too far.
The butler, faithful old retainer Barrymore, is played by Jeremy Lloyd Thomas as a bloke you wouldn’t have anywhere near the house: he’s got a giant beard that looks like a black bib and he talks like an asthmatic pirate; what’s more, he sports a limp. Seldon (Al Naed), the escaped prisoner out on the moors, has a con’s outfit and long yellow hair that make him look like fifties TV character Andy Pandy; he’s massively hysterical.
On the other hand, Lloyd-James’s Watson, who’s the real protagonist in this one, helps to rein the evening in. He’s bumbling, kindly, incompetent; and brave. Sarah Wynne Kordas, as the oddly-named Laura Lyons, and Karen Henson (Beryl Stapleton) also give well-measured performances. So does Samuel Clemens, with a convincing American accent as Sir Henry Baskerville.
Sound and special effects are a delight. Beside all that canine howling, we get some comically exaggerated smoke whenever a train departs from or arrives at a station, or some moorland mist is called for, or whenever Holmes smokes his pipe - it’s that same bent billiard Peterson he used last year in the Ripper play.
This is a cracking start to the Thriller Season.
Sherlock Holmes: Nicholas Briggs.
Dr Watson: Adrian Lloyd-James.
Sir Henry Baskerville/Stagehand: Samuel Clemens.
Dr Mortimer/Postmaster/Stagehand: Patric Kearns.
Stagehand/Soldier: Andrew Dickens.
John Barrymore/James the Postman’s Son/Stagehand: Jeremy Lloyd-Thomas.
Beryl Stapleton: Karen Henson.
Eliza Barrymore: Maggie Stables.
Sir Charles/Mr Frankland: John Hester.
Selden/Inspector Lestrade: Al Naed.
Laura Lyons: Sarah Wynne Kordas.
Director: Colin McIntyre.
Designer: Geoff Gilder.
Lighting: Michael Donohugh.
Sound: Patric Kearns.
2009-08-13 12:02:19