Gruesome Twosome

DOUBLE BILL: The Speckled Band/The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Friday 27^th October 2023

A pairing of two-handers, an opportunity to compare and contrast, to trace the development of the whodunit… Also a chance to have a bloody good night out.

First up is  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band, featuring the world’s most famous fictional detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes, portrayed here by James Nicholas, who has also penned this adaptation.  Playing Doctor Watson (and everyone else in the story) is the consistently excellent Darren Haywood.  Haywood drops into characters without even dropping a hat, conjuring up women instantaneously – the surprise shocks laughter from the audience – and donning a top hat and booming voice to embody the forceful Doctor Grimesby Roylott.  It’s like watching a virtuoso fiddle.  Watson’s narration draws us along with Holmes into the mystery: a young lady dies in a locked room.  Even though I know who dun it, the storytelling is exquisite and I can’t wait to see how it is played out.  Nicholas and Haywood portray the prickly Holmes/Watson dynamic like old hands, capturing the eccentricity and sometimes coldness of the former, and the warmth and humour of the latter.  Inevitably, it’s a wordy piece but Oliver Hume’s direction keeps things moving, drawing on the charisma of his brace of actors and the intrigue of the story to keep us hooked.

Next is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which is generally credited as the first detective story.  We have Poe to thank for the genre, which had a bloody birth in the form of this mystery.  Importantly, the story gives us the detective as lead character: we meet C. August Dupin, a smug know-it-all.  It’s easy to see him as a prototype for Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.  Dupin (every time I hear his name I want to add du vin, du Boursin) is played by Darren Haywood, mercifully without an Inspector Clouseau accent!  This time it falls to James Nicholas to provide the rest of the characters, and he does so in a dazzling display of his versatility as an actor.  Writer-director Mark Webster’s adaptation doesn’t stint on gory details, nor on comic relief to keep things palatable.  Animated projections on a screen at the back depict illustrations in a book, stylised representations of the grisly crime scene – it’s left to our imaginations to picture things in detail.  The turning pages remind us of the genre’s literary origins.

Both stories play out on the same set (by Webster and Ben Mills-Wood), a clutter of wooden crates and period objects.  Simon Ravenhill, Haina Al-Saud, and Nasrin Khanjari have provided period costumes, which play a big part in creating a sense of the time, and assisting the actors to portray a variety of characters quickly and succinctly.  Nathan Bower’s lighting changes and sound design conjure up locations and atmosphere expertly.  The intimate space of the Blue Orange begins to feel like a locked room itself…

It’s a thoroughly entertaining evening, performed to the hilt by two of the Blue Orange’s star players.  You can almost hear the cogs turning in the heads of fellow audience members as they try to solve the cases for themselves.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

James Nicholas (right) looking concerned about the flamboyance of Darren Haywood’s bow-tie

Heir of the Dog

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

Blue Orange Theatre, Birmingham, Friday 22^nd October, 2021

This stage adaptation by ‘Mark W’ of the most famous case of the Baker Street detective is doggedly faithful to the Arthur Conan Doyle original, down to the chapter titles that separate the action into sections.  As in the book, our narrator is Doctor Watson (Alex Nikitas), recounting the tale while the rest of the cast of four play multiple roles to populate the stage.  James Nicholas’s Holmes is spirited and arrogant, brimming with verve.  He has the barefaced boldness to portray Barrymore the butler without the beard for which he is noted, but I find this doesn’t irk me as much as it might—the characterisations are so different, so vivid. 

Becoming a fixture at the Blue Orange, Richard Buck returns again to portray Sir Henry, heir to the Baskerville fortune and the cursed hound, along with others like a coach driver and old Mr Franklin.  Buck makes a tall and handsome Henry.  Indeed, this production is a chance for this trio of actors to showcase their versatility – none more so than its only female member, Emma Cooper, who along with all the female parts, gives us a Doctor Mortimer that is probably the strongest characterisation of the lot.  Nikitas’s Watson remains a constant throughout, our touchstone amid the comings and goings; his Watson is a man of intelligence, a true apprentice to Holmes, and not the bumbling sidekick he is sometimes portrayed to be. 

The character changes are handled swiftly and economically, with the addition of a hat and a coat and a change of stance.  I know if it were me, I’d put the wrong voice to the wrong hat, my accents all blending into one.  Director Oliver Hume demands a lot of his cast, never letting them leave the stage for a second.  He also works hard to keep the piece from becoming static; it is rather wordy as no detail from the Doyle is omitted.

The action is supported by Michael Harris and Nathan Bower’s work on lighting and sound, with well-placed effects to add to the atmosphere. I think the show could withstand more of this, more music and atmospheric sound effects. The set, by Mark Webster, strongly suggests Holmes’s Baker Street residence, with the props and furnishings utilised to represent the other locations; we never lose sight of this being a story Watson is telling in Holmes’s flat. Like all good pieces of narrative theatre, it engages the audience’s imagination to fill in what cannot be staged.

There are a couple of moments when the energy and pace flag a little during this first night performance, but on the whole this is an engaging piece of storytelling, servicing the mystery well.  The titular Hound is left to our imaginations, which is probably the best way to handle it on this occasion.  To use any other method, they’d be barking.

****

Caning it: Doctor Watson (Alex Nikitas) and Sherlock Holmes (James Nicholas)