Of course, nobody would want a Sherlock Holmes plot to be anything less than convoluted but this story just doesn’t have the same narrative urgency as, say, The Hound Of The Baskervilles or Blackeyed’s own earlier Sign Of Four.
While it’s no more or less confusing than your average Dr Who episode a degree of patience is required. It is quite a while before the diverse strands of narrative weave together and for rather too long the audience is left wondering if they are watching two separate shows only one of which is the one they have come to see. Indeed, it tantalises without delivering Conan Doyle’s fault largely but perhaps Lane/Blackeyed might have risked the wrath of Holmes aficionados by abandoning this strand.įor the rest, there is little for purists to complain of as the piece retains the tenor of the original and takes few theatrical risks. While it’s an interesting divertissement this section doesn’t really add much to the mix and wouldn’t be missed if it wasn’t there. Indeed, there is a third element at the start of Act 2 when Holmes recounts his first meeting with the infamous Professor Moriarty in an art gallery. Nick Lane’s classy adaptation solves this problem by developing the narratives in parallel and switching relatively seamlessly between them. The earlier story has repercussions for the latter, so it is essential to keep both, but any staged version runs the risk of being fragmentary.
SHERLOCK HOLMES REVIEW FULL
It’s perhaps the least well known of the four full length tales and perhaps with good reason as it features a duo of distinct narratives (one of which doesn’t even feature Holmes himself), in a pair of separate time frames occuring on two continents. Sherlock Holmes: Valley Of Fear is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the last of the novels featuring the iconic Victorian detective – most of his appearances are in the author’s extensive collection of short stories. One such is Blackeyed Theatre who have been and will continue touring their latest adaptation of Conan Doyle’s works they have also filmed a performance to access at home. However, there are still some enterprising companies who look to do the double – a live show with the option to watch a filmed stream at some point. Audience members who cannot get to theatre venues for reasons of mobility, geography or economics are missing out and playmakers are in danger of denying themselves a funding stream particularly at a time when seats are so expensive and there still seems to be a general unwillingness to sit in a physical venue. While in some ways this is a good thing it is also, perforce, a shame. The hurried decline in online material, while not altogether a surprise suggests that we have largely returned to a pre pandemic status as far as theatre is concerned. During the last ten days or so, and for the first time in well over two years, the front page of my blog has featured only onstage reviews.
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