The show is best enjoyed if you give yourself over to an old-world style of storytelling, in which events unspool slowly and much of the information is told, not shown. Yet there are Easter eggs galore for serious Holmes fans, with references to many a recurring theme of the stories, from his addiction to a possibly lost love to what truly transpired at that waterfall, the flashbacks imaginatively evoked by the designs of Erik Paulson (set) and Mary Shabatura (lighting). Meanwhile, the three men claiming to be Holmes capture little of the charm and charisma of the original, and are never allowed to indulge in his raison d’etre of detective work. Watson is our main character, and Bruce Roach fully fleshes him out in all his 19th-century British gentlemanliness with a dash of befuddlement. Holmes mysteries are about the triumph of brain power, as he cleverly cracks the case and reveals the culprit to be the one of the colorful suspects you likely least expected. However, “Holmes and Watson” climbs so deeply inside the Holmes legend that it seems to forget the primary appeal of his mysteries: Watching the detective draw one astounding conclusion after another, employing methods uniquely his own. Park Square has done it with Holmes six times since 2008, and this one looks to have all of the requisite elements for a ripping yarn. Rather than adapting a Conan Doyle short story, “Holmes and Watson” is more like “fan fiction,” taking characters created by another and spinning some new stories for them. Evans in Park Square Theatre’s production of “Holmes and Watson.” (Courtesy of Park Square Theatre)

Watson, Peter Simmons as Holmes #3, Daniel Petzold as Dr. Currently filling Park Square Theatre’s now traditional summer mystery slot, it begins when Watson is summoned to a remote island asylum at which three patients are each claiming to be Sherlock Holmes - even though Holmes has evidently fallen to his death at a waterfall a few years earlier.īruce Roach as Dr. Thanks to one of the newest entries in the canon, Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Holmes and Watson,” you can add three more incarnations of the Victorian gumshoe to the list. Watson, the author first setting the pair upon a stage in 1899, with countless other playwrights doing the same since.

The narrator of Conan Doyle’s four novels and 58 short stories about Holmes’ adventures was his partner in investigative work, Dr. For 135 years, Arthur Conan Doyle’s fin de siècle super sleuth has been entertaining readers and audiences, employing his powers of observation, grasp of minutiae and insights into human nature to catch a thief or murderer. Perhaps a glance at this review’s headline has made your deduction elementary: It’s Sherlock Holmes. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, who is the most frequently portrayed human literary character in the history of film and television?

Facebook photo theater