United Kingdom Blackeyed Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear: Filmed (directed by Alex Harvey-Brown) at Bracknell’s Wilde Theatre, 16.9.2022, and obtainable right here as a digital stream. (JPr)
Production:
Writer and Director – Nick Lane
Composer – Tristan Parkes
Set designer – Victoria Spearing
Lighting designer – Oliver Welsh
Costume designer – Naomi Gibbs
Action designer – Robert Myles
Producer – Adrian McDougall
Cast:
Sherlock Holmes / Teddy Baldwin – Luke Barton
Doctor John Watson / Thad Morris / Eldon Stanger – Joseph Derrington
Jack McMurdo / Detective White-Mason / Birdy Edwards / John Douglas – Blake Kubena
Inspector MacDonald / Officer Jasper / Ames / Bodymaster McGinty / Cecil Barker / Professor Moriarty – Gavin Molloy
Mrs Hudson / Officer Marvin / Ettie Shafter / Mrs.Allen / Mrs. Ivy Douglas – Alice Osmanski
Blackeyed Theatre describes themselves as ‘one of the UK’s main mid-scale touring theatre corporations’ who since 2004 ‘have been creating exciting opportunities for artists and audiences by producing theatre that’s audacious, accessible and memorable.’ Recent world premiere productions embrace Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Jane Eyre, The Sign of Four, The Great Gatsby and Dracula and they’re at the moment touring Nick Lane’s adaptation of the final of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s full-length Sherlock Holmes novels, The Valley of Fear.
Now my background is that the anthology of quick tales about Sherlock Holmes was my important studying on any lengthy journey I made once I was many years youthful. I’ve not learn them once more for a while however nonetheless avidly revisit any previous movie or TV variations, and any new ones that seem occasionally. My favourites nonetheless are Basil Rathbone’s jingoistic wartime movie sequence and – for me the definitive Holmes – Douglas Wilmer’s short-lived BBC assumption of function within the mid-60s. Later that decade the BBC made a sequence with Peter Cushing who had appeared within the well-regarded The Hound of the Baskervilles for Hammer Films in 1959. In the following years there was the criminally underrated 1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes from legendary movie director Billy Wilder, Jeremy Brett’s Holmes for ITV and Benedict Cumberbatch’s up to date Sherlock for BBC in 4 sequence from 2010 until 2017. It was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and featured Martin Freeman as Holmes’s trusty companion Dr John Watson and the late Una Stubbs because the landlady at 221B Baker Street, Mrs Hudson.
It is the Cumberbatch model that clearly has influenced how Nick Lane’s depicts Luke Barton’s Holmes and Joseph Derrington’s Watson in his The Valley of Fear and they’re younger than we ‘traditionally’ see. Conan Doyle’s 1914 novel isn’t one I’ve learn as a lot as The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Sign of Four and it was good to not have solved the thriller earlier than watching Blackeyed Theatre’s very welcome digital stream!
Holmes is with Watson in Baker Street when he receives a cipher from an informant. He decodes it with assistance from a Whitaker’s Almanack, and it reads ‘There is danger—may—come—very—soon—one–Douglas-rich—country-now-at—Birlstone—House—confidence—is—pressing’. Inspector MacDonald quickly arrives to inform Holmes that certainly a Mr John Douglas of Birlstone Manor House, Birlstone, Sussex, has been ‘horribly murdered’. For Holmes ‘The game is afoot’ and units off with Watson and MacDonald for Birlstone to fulfill the native detective there, White-Mason. Watson narrates how he’s ‘Preparing to decode a mystery that had it roots planted 20 years earlier and some 4000 miles away’. (We quickly realise that this machine – which can lengthen the play past its pure size – is critical as a result of there’s hard-working solid of 5 actors portraying 20 roles!) Watson continues, ‘And now if I may beg your indulgence, we shall leave the familiar confines of Baker Street and head back in time to the coal-rich state of Pennsylvania better to entangle those roots.’
We at the moment are again in 1875 and listen to (the solid?) intone a conventional tune ‘Parting Friends’ and its repeat of ‘I hope we’ll meet in Canaan’s land’ which provides to the ambiance with the change to the Pennsylvania scene. It all will get a bit difficult initially with the actors in several roles, however it all works surprisingly properly. We meet gun-toting Brother John McMurdo travelling from Chicago to Vermissa on the head of Vermissa Valley and who’s in search of work. On the journey he meets one other Brother from the native lodge (341) who suggests he goes to the Union House and see Boss McGinty, the Bodymaster of Vermissa Lodge. He is the pinnacle of an notorious gang of enforcers (and murderers) known as the Scowrers. At the native boarding home, he falls for Ettie, the daughter of its proprietor, and to chop a protracted story quick, regardless of Ettie’s protestations he inveigles himself into the gang.
At Birlstone House we find out how John Douglas supposedly made his cash within the Californian gold fields earlier than coming to England along with his second spouse. He had been shot within the head with a sawn-off shotgun obliterating his options, there was a card in his hand with ‘V. V. 341’, his marriage ceremony ring is lacking, and there’s a brand-like scar – a triangle inside a circle – on his arm. There is a muddy boot print by the window and a suggestion the assassin jumped out into the moat to make their escape. Holmes quickly wonders why he can solely discover one small dumbbell when he expects Douglas used two. Equally puzzling is why Ivy, Douglas’s supposedly loving spouse, is just not as distressed as one would possibly anticipate? And why does the story of household buddy, Cecil Barker, who found the physique shortly unravel.
Along the best way Holmes is confronted by his nemesis Professor Moriarty who threatens Watson and Mary, his new bride. (Again, Gavin Molloy owed a lot to Andrew Scott’s Moriarty in Sherlock.) Truth-be-told Watson’s storytelling does maintain the whole lot up however is required for the solid to vary their garments, it makes it fairly like a radio play and you possibly can most likely take pleasure in The Valley of Fear simply as a lot together with your eyes shut. However, Victoria Spearing’s single set – mainly some distressed wooden and William Morris-style wallpaper – is kind of efficient as we cross forwards and backwards from Pennsylvania to Kent with minimal modifications of stage furnishings till – with some entertaining banter and well-choreographed motion – all is revealed. It isn’t considered one of Conan Doyle’s greatest tales, however I definitely loved being within the firm of Holmes and Watson as soon as once more.
I watched one thing like this throughout lockdown and by comparability that was like am-dram (to not belittle some distinctive newbie corporations!) in comparison with the appearing in The Valley of Fear which was pretty much as good as I’ve seen at someplace just like the National Theatre. Luke Barton, Joseph Derrington, Blake Kubena, Gavin Molloy and Alice Osmanski have been an exceptionally hardworking and completed solid in numerous totally different roles with differing accents. The intense Barton did convey to life (as Watson describes him) an ‘arrogant, infuriating, complex, brilliant man’ however channels Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady a bit of an excessive amount of. There is nice chemistry between him and Joseph Derrington’s personable and ever-loyal Watson. Derrington wasn’t Nigel Bruce, Nigel Stock or Edward Hardwicke from movie and TV, however he portrayed the perfect qualities of all of them together with Colin Blakely within the Billy Wilder movie – a specific favorite of mine – who he jogged my memory of most.
Blackeyed Theatre’s The Valley of Fear is very advisable for all devotees of Conan Doyle’s Holmes and watch it on tour at a theatre close to you or see this pleasing HD recording for your self.
Jim Pritchard