After their success in the production of The Hound of the Baskervilles last year, Peter Egan and Philip Franks again take on the roles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, in a revival of The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, which ran for over a year in London's West End from 1988. It is a very different sort of story than the latest Hollywood film.
Professor Moriarty
The play tells the story of Holmes and Watson's friendship from their first meeting to the climactic battle with their arch-enemy, criminal genius Professor Moriarty, at the end of the first act. Holmes admires his nemesis for the power of his intellect, even while reviling the man for his depravity.
Using quotations from the original 54 stories and 6 novels, the story takes Holmes from his lodgings at 221b Baker Street London to the Reichenbach Falls, over the course of more than a decade. The script reveals how the friend's differing personalities strengthen their friendship, which is tested to the limits by that final battle. Peter Egan's Holmes battles with drug addiction while he obsesses with bringing down Moriarty, while Philip Franks' Dr Watson is never far away, struggling to bring a sense of reality to his friend.
221b Baker Street
The play opens as do all Holmes stories: a visitor calls at 221b Baker Street, and Holmes studies him before displaying his extraordinary powers of deduction. Here the visitor is a young Watson, answering Holmes’s advertisement to share rooms. Watson is shell-shocked and deeply disillusioned following medical service and a serious wound during the Second Afghan War (all of which Holmes discerns), and is emotionally vulnerable. Holmes is his usual arrogant self, but he sees in the kind Doctor Watson a personality complementing his own.
As played by Franks, Watson is good-natured, earnest, intelligent, his virtues ordinary next to Holmes’s genius. Watson is to quote Holmes, “the one fixed point in a changing universe.” Despite Holmes' put-down however, Watson provides Holmes with an audience and, ultimately, his chronicler. Although Holmes often comments, “You see but you do not observe,” Watson does in fact observe Holmes' abilities, actions and personality, records these observations. After his reports of Holmes’s successes appear in print, new clients swarm to the modest rooms.
Peter Egan & Philip Franks
Peter Egan is best-known for his television role in Ever Decreasing Circles and has starred on the West End in Noises Off. Philip Franks is well-known for his television roles in The Darling Buds of May and Heartbeat and recent stage role in Journey’s End. This new show is directed by Robin Herford, renowned for his expert creation of The Woman in Black and director of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Secret of Sherlock Holmes contains excellent performances from both stars in an examination of the personality of the great detective, rather than the usual whodunnit or action-adventure that viewers see in Hollywood epics, such as the latest film starring Robert Downey, jr. and Jude Law.
The Theatre Royal in Bath is usually better known for staging productions en route to the West End; this time The Secret of Sherlock Holmes is travelling in the other direction. Those audiences in Windsor and Edinburgh considering visiting the theatre should obtain tickets as soon as possible for what is a must-see production.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
