There’s a lot of waiting in a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Waiting for all the relevant characters to be introduced, waiting to see how they fit into the tale, waiting for Sherlock to make his inevitable and incredibly accurate deductions but, when it comes to the big reveal at the end – it’s certainly worth the wait!
The Sign of Four is a complex tale that has it’s roots in India during the rebellion of 1857, although the action both starts, and finishes, in London. Holmes is bored, finding his only excitement in his regular use of “the needle”, as he euphemistically calls his cocaine habit, when he and Dr Watson are interrupted by the arrival of Mary Morstan who reveals a mystery so complex that Holmes simply can’t resist it.
Luke Barton, as Sherlock, Joseph Derrington, who narrates the tale as part of his performance as Dr John Watson, and Stephanie Rutherford as the woman at the centre of the mystery are the linchpins around which the tale unfolds, and they all work tirelessly to make sure that the tale is told incredibly well.
Holmes is quick-witted, cold, calculating and, as this is only the second of Arthur Conan Doyle’s full length novels featuring the detective, almost devoid of the arrogance that is often found in the later novels. Watson is not a comic character but a man with huge medical knowledge and his heart firmly pinned to his sleeve. Miss Morstan is also driven by her emotions and, although not exactly the “damsel in distress”, she has a vulnerability that just makes you want her to get the help she needs to solve the mystery.
Stephanie Rutherford also plays other female characters in the piece, with the remaining dozen or so male characters portrayed by just three, massively versatile and talented, actors – Christopher Glover, Zach
Lee and Ru Hamilton.
As if dividing all the characters between six actors isn’t enough, all the incidental music throughout the evening is played live by those same six people. Interchanging between various woodwind, brass and stringed instruments, their incredible skill as musicians is just as impressive as their immense skill as actors!
The simple looking, but cleverly used, scenery easily shifts from being the living room at 221b Baker Street, to a fort in the middle of a furious battle and even to a steam launch, powering it’s way up the River Thames in pursuit of…. no, of course I can’t tell you.
Blackeyed Theatre, together with the New Theatre Royal Portsmouth and the South Hill Park Arts Centre, have worked hard, and rehearsed well, to produce a sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, always exciting and incredibly entertaining piece of theatre – a thrilling insight into the mind of the detective genius that is Sherlock Holmes.
***** Five Stars