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Curious
case: (l-r) Winkles, Croy and McCabe in The Hound
of the Baskervilles.
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Hot
Dog!
By
James Yeara
The
Hound of the Baskervilles
By
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, loosely adapted by Steven Canny and
John Nicholson
Directed by Tony Simotes, Shakespeare & Company, Elayne
P. Bernstein Theatre, through Nov. 8
A proper farce plays to the sound of slamming doors. Shakespeare
& Company’s current fall production of The Hound of
the Baskervilles has no slamming doors. However, it is
crammed full of the sounds of sliding doors, slamming curtains,
sliding actors, dropped and bouncing bodies, howling winds,
growling dogs and helpful authorial voiceover narration. And
this comical cacophony serves as soundtrack to a parade of
ridiculous sights: wigs askew, helpful signposts, a molted
stuffed eagle, a sheep in a bag, assorted abused costumes,
magnifying glasses, pipes, pistols, picture frames, puppy
prints, and a partridge in a pear tree. So while not a proper
farce, Shakespeare & Company’s The Hound of the Baskervilles
is a silly good time full of manic glee and a proper disregard
for the propriety of pretentious literature. As Holmes famously
says (famously quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V), “the
game’s afoot.”
Director Tony Simotes keeps the game playfully in step—from
the opening blackout request to the audience that those with
a “total inability to tell fact from fiction please leave
the auditorium” to the closing puns “Let’s put a muzzle on
that; thank God this case is Rover.”
Simote’s three-person cast is peerless: Josh Aaron McCabe
(as Sherlock Holmes, villain Jack Stapleton and ingénue Cecil
Stapleton, among another half-dozen characters in and out
of wigs, skirts, and kilts), Ryan Winkles (as Sir Henry Baskerville,
among an additional half-dozen characters in and out
of wigs, skirts, and kilts) and Jonathan Croy (as Dr. John
Watson, played with the energy, focus, and comic verve of
any half-dozen other actors combined). The three whiz through
the 54-minute first act of the play, nary missing a pun, sight
gag, non sequitur, or chance to knock not just a brick out
of the Fourth Wall, but whole sections.
As Watson, Croy’s reenactment of the death of Sir Charles
Baskerville encapsulates the production in a 30-second bit
of lazzi. Croy is more animated and focused as a corpse than
other actors are. . . . The comparison’s been used, but is
still apt—as are most of the jokes in The Hound of the
Baskervilles.
Most
of the elements of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original 1901
novel are here, but the quick pace, the zany Marx Brothers-begot-Monty
Python-begot-Complete Works of Shakespeare quirkiness,
and the tongue-in-cheekiness of the trio make this The
Hound of the Baskervilles a delight. If your kids, students,
or grandparents don’t like this Shakespeare & Company
comedy, they just don’t have a sense of humor.
Even the groanworthy puns—“What do you think of this ‘Hound
of the Baskervilles?” Sir Henry is asked; he answers nonplussed,
“It’s just a pet story of the family’s”—create laughs. As
do the sometimes belabored setups: Jack Stapleton states that
all his students died of food poisoning; when Watson asks
what type of school it was, a smiling Holmes replies with
that most famous of Sherlockian cliches (which Doyle never
actually wrote).
The 45-minute second act moves sprightly through mire, fog,
and murder, with Winkles supplying the tour-de-farce lazzi:
creating a rapid-fire gallery of Baskerville portraits by
standing in, on, or behind a gilded picture frame. The improvisational,
whiz-bang feel of this The Hound of the Baskervilles
makes the “mistakes” (which don’t exist in real theater) all
the more funny, and repeated viewings recommended. This is
a true (prat) fall classic.
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