It’s fascinating (to me, at least) that Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of The Baskervilles and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness were written within a year or so of each other.
It’s common knowledge that the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” never actually appears in any of the novels or short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. But its spirit permeates their pages. Logic will discover the criminal, and order will be restored. Despite appearances, all is ultimately simple and secure.
But while Conan Doyle was writing this paean to rationality, Conrad’s colonialist Mister Kurtz was having another vision. A too privileged glimpse into the savagery of the human heart drew from Kurtz the cry “The horror, the horror”. It’s another type of simplicity, but one void of any security. Enter the 20th Century.
It probably seems I’ve begun far too seriously for a response to the Genesian Theatre’s production of The Hound of the Baskervilles. After all, Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s adaption is a silly spoof. And, under the direction of Richard Cotter, it’s splendid fun.
Three actors – Alyona Popova, Kate Easlea and Oliver Harcourt-Ham – play all the characters, and do so brilliantly. Cotter creates a theatrical space in which verbal play and physical humour thrive.
Popova as Sherlock Holmes captures the hilariously hyperbolic confidence of the great detective. (And, in another of her roles – a yokel attempting to wrangle an recalcitrant and unseen horse – her physicality is point perfect.) It’s an absolutely superb performance.
Easlea is terrific as her Dr Watson navigates playing second fiddle to a man who would be the entire orchestra. Her movement is also wonderful, either standing in Edwardian rigidity, arms at angle in a great coat, or nonchalantly pulling a pistol on some harmless, and imagined, sheep.
Harcourt-Ham as Henry, the Canadian heir to the Baskerville estate, draws huge laughs with his excellent comic timing and his gentle straight-faced matter-of-fact-ness. His yokel with cow, inexplicably and gloriously in a hessian bag, is also very funny.
Overall, it’s tremendously enjoyable.
But why do we enjoy spoofing works like The Hound?
I guess it’s because there’s something very quaint about their world view. For example, Henry sees Miss Stapleton (another role for Popova) and instantly falls in love, a fantasy mocked in a beautifully realised dance sequence. Similarly, the three lead male characters behave like such good-natured chums. (They’re gentlemen after all, and Englishmen at that – except for the Canadian, who is an honorary one while Britannia blithely rules the waves and the map of the world remains stained pink.) Easlea and Harcourt-Ham, in their giggly roughhouse, marvellously encapsulate the childlike aspect of this.
But most importantly, Holmes restores order through logic.
I suspect we’re no longer sure that’s possible.
And the hound never appears on stage, an omission that keeps the horror, the horror at bay.
Paul Gilchrist
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (adapted by Steven Canny and John Nicholson)
at Genesian Theatre until 17 June
Image by LSH Media
Theatre Red 