‘Sherlock Holmes’ at Purple Rose is a new story that would delight even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
CHELSEA, Mich.–There has been a resurgence in the last five years of American and British film and television adaptations of Victorian super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, the fictional creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and our attraction to the character and his particular brand of genius shows no signs of waning. However, the deeper look at the characters and context that create and support him in a way that is at once throughly contemporary as well as authentically fin de siecle The Purple Rose offers in world premiere Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear is particularly welcome.
Written by David MacGregor as a fun side project while researching a nonfiction book he was writing about Sherlock Holmes, this is MacGregor’s seventh play produced at the Purple Rose, and it decenters Holmes to some extent to delightfully imagine recognizable characters from the original Doyle stories as well as how they might interact with historical figures from the era.
For example, the “filthy lying Dutchman” Vincent van Gogh and his titular ear make an appearance among Holmes and Watson in their opulent rooms, as does dandy Oscar Wilde and many of his witticisms, both real and imagined. But Irene Adler, the American opera star and only love interest of Holmes’s to appear in Doyle’s stories, shows up in perhaps the fullest glory. In MacGregor’s imagining, Watson has written her as Mrs. Hudson, Holmes’s housekeeper, so as to avoid the scandal of her cohabitation with Holmes, and to keep the adventurous detective a hero, since the stories of men in love, particularly those who are married, amount to “just a steady boring walk into the grave.”
However, there’s nothing boring about Adler, the true adventurer and nymphomaniacal, potentially polyamorous, feminist who is the real sleuthing genius. She’s a wonderfully complex character captured magnificently by Sarab Kamoo with emotional depth and nimble physicality, including an easy shift into and out of a charming Cockney accent.
Adler is turned on by everything, not the least of which is art and genius itself, which makes for incredibly dynamic scenes with Mark Colson as an excellent Sherlock, Paul Stroili as a wonderful Dr. Watson, Tom Whalen as a pitiful yet funny van Gogh, and Rusty Mewha as a terrific Wilde. But the chemistry is palpable with Caitlin Cavannaugh who magnificently plays the other powerful woman on stage, a French diva and villain of the highest order. When the two sword fight in corsets and thigh highs, there’s no doubt who dominates the stage—and runs the world.
The role of women is but one relevant contemporary theme here. Art and commerce, particularly the value of art in a capitalist context (“Art must be respected regardless of its monetary value,” Holmes insists), with special reverberations for the internet age and a meta effect as a theater piece, is another poignant idea that emerges.
But most of all, under Guy Sanville’s extraordinary direction, this show is an expertly crafted, utterly intelligent, and yet purely delightful escape. Though the mystery itself isn’t entirely clear at the end of Act I, the language, characters, and scenes are far more important than the narrative arc.
And visually, it’s a stunner. All the action is focused in the lush, ornate study, designed exquisitely by Bartley H. Bauer, dressed in reds and golds, with built-in bookshelves heavy with objets d’art and a grandiose dome-shaped sunroom conservatory center stage. Elegant and subtle lighting by Noele Stollmack, fantastic props by Danna Segrest, and lovely period costumes by Suzanne Young complete the historically accurate picture that allows space for the witty anachronisms to work beautifully.
It’s a Sherlock Holmes that expertly leaps between worlds, making more of beloved characters than perhaps thought possible to offer thoughtful, artful entertainment full of imagination and intrigue.