Sherlock Holmes adaptation gives feminist twist to classic stories
BARD In The Botanics (BiB) – the annual summer theatre programme held in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens – has, for some years, broadened its remit to encompass not only the plays of Shakespeare, but also works by other classical authors. In recent years – to take three examples – we have been treated to adaptations of works by such theatrical luminaries as Euripides, Henrik Ibsen and Christopher Marlowe.
I am, I admit readily, open to accusations of intellectual snobbery in suggesting that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – creator of the famous, and enduringly popular fictional detective Sherlock Holmes – is not a natural bedfellow of the dramatists named above.
Nevertheless, it is to the Edinburgh-born doctor and writer that BiB's associate director Jennifer Dick turns for the company's latest play in the Botanics' splendid Kibble Palace glasshouse.
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The lovely venue shares its Victorian provenance with Doyle (and, indeed, with Holmes). As such, it proves to be a good fit for this play about Baker Street's most famous fictional resident.
Dick – who is both the adapter and the director of this drama – ensures that many of the established pillars of the Holmes myth are resolutely in place. Of course, Holmes (played with the necessary alertness and condescension by Adam Donaldson) has Dr John Watson (played with affection and resignation by Stephen Arden) as his long-suffering sidekick.
James Boal (who has a busy evening, playing no fewer than four characters) takes on the role of the befuddled police inspector Lestrade. There are even references to the off-stage escapades of the Baker Street Irregulars.
Dick does innovate, however, when it comes to the character of Irene Adler, aka 'The Woman'. As with Lara Pulver's performance (opposite Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes) in the BBC series Sherlock,
Rebecca Robin's clever and glamorous Adler has a seductive power over Holmes.
However, here, she is not only a criminal mastermind but a determined champion of the rights of women who is bent on revenge. The truth and justice of the play's contemplation of misogyny are unarguable, as is the pleasure of seeing powerful male chauvinists getting their just desserts.
However, Dick has a tendency to write for Adler speeches that are occasionally more polemical than they need to be. This is a pity, as Robin blesses the character with a darkly compelling and sympathetic performance.
Boal is required to play central casting archetypes in the rough, but decent, sailor Captain Crocker, the arrogant King of Bohemia and the pernicious blackmailer Milverton. Each character is managed with colourful aplomb in both of his dimensions.
Holmes isn't Holmes without his weakness for narcotics, and Donaldson plays the scene depicting the detective's dependency on cocaine with a believable exhilaration and anguish; even if the decision to illustrate the episode by way of the well-worn song The Windmills Of Your Mind is a tad obvious.
This is, then, a nicely put together adaptation of Doyle's tales, which has been given a satisfying feminist twist. What it sometimes lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in theatrical brio.
Until August 2: www.bardinthebotanics.co.uk
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