48 REVIEW
OF THE ARTS
Kenneth Hurren on melodramatising Sherlock Holmes
This is no place to look, I had best confess at the outset, for the unerring exposure of any irregularities (Baker Street Irregularities they would doubtless, have to be called) in the Royal Shakespeare Company's new production, Sherlock Holmes, at the Aldwych. While it is hardly possible to survive into adulthood in England without having read at least one of the works of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and to read one, some would insist, is to be impelled to read all), the days of my own familiarity with them is distant now. It was, in any case, no more than a mild addiction.
I could not, for instance, spot if anything were suddenly to be out of place in the living-room of 221B Baker Street as reconstructed in the London hostelry that bears Holmes's name (an enterprise, incidentally, that seems to me to be rivalled in relentless whimsicality only by the replica of King Arthur's Round Table at Tintagel); and I cannot, for more pertinent instance, say whether John Wood, who plays the great man at the Aldwych, is precisely true to the letter and spirit of Doyle's hero or whether this is a Holmes of his own. My suspicion is, however, that Wood has studied his man very carefully indeed and that neither his appearance nor his manner will do damage to anyone's image of the detective. He is tall, lean, icily languid, looking habitually pale and
perhaps vaguely unwell,. drily amused by the stunning effect upon others of his throwaway samples of his deductive powers, and in his approach to crime detection and to danger as casually confident as God. Nevertheless, Wood's performance is so persuasive that it is even possible, now and then, to suspend disbelief in the character's reality.
Nothing of the sort can be said, I'm afraid, for the tiresome events of the play, evolved in 1899 by the American actor William Gillette, from the stories, 'A Scandal in Bohemia' and 'The Final Problem.' The plot, which will strike almost no one as a model of lucidity, has to do largely with the recovery of a packet of compromising letters, and this leads somehow to Holmes's confrontation with Professor Moriarty (played by Philip Locke with a sort of haggard panache entirely suitable to a man whose gloating triumphs are forever doomed to be superseded by crushing defeats) who arranges for the detective to be disposed of by thugs in a gas chamber in Stepney. Holmes not only outwits this villainous assembly, escaping himself and bringing them to justice; but also -deftly rescues from their clutches, a much putupon young woman with whom for one dreadful moment, it almost appears he is in love. Doyle is credited with the co-authorship of the piece and eyebrows will doubtless be raised at his sanctioning of this last unseemly implication but in truth it is no more startling than that he should have lent his name to the whole
fearful melodramatic mess.
Frank Dunlop, who has been borrowed from the Young Vic to direct it, is not altogether oblivious of the risible opportunities in the material, and he has encouraged some of his players (notably Trevor Peacock, Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Nicholas Selby in assorted rascally assignments) in engaging histrionic extravagances. Even John Wood is not above snatching the occasional laugh (what else, after all, can he do with such a line as "Yes, back to my old love," as he gives himself a casual shot of cocaine?). On the other hand there are tedious interpolations of Victoriana between the scenes that seem intended as serious period 'colour,' and in general the spirit of burlesque is
not taken half far enough. Borrowing a director from the Players' Theatre Club, where they have always had a way with such things, might have been a shrewder move.
Apart from the first of a group of three South African plays by Athol Fugard (at the Royal Court), which I think might be more rewardingly considered together rather than separately, the contemporary thestre last week offered only a sad little niece called Judies (at the Comedy), which has to do with the prodigal sexual exploits of a couple of singularly unfastidious Liverpudlian girl flatmates. They are said to be schoolteachers and it may be that the author David Fitzsimmons, intends the play as a comment on, or even an explanation of, the present state of education. It is likelier, though, that the girls' daytime occupation was chosen fairly arbitrarily, for most of Fitzsimmons's concern is with their extramural activities. Played with some candour and remarkable resilience by Pauline Collins and Christine Hargreaves, they collect
their bed-partners with nyphomanicial fervour, and no perceptible discrimination — apparently, it amazingly turns out, in the belief that marriage will ensue. Their hopes are particularly and absurdly raised by one endearing innocent (played by John Alderton), but the result of their advances in only to persuade him that there is no point in buying a cow when milk is so cheap; the girls are left to ponder glumly the errors in their tactics; and the whole entertainment — save when Miss Collins is c!owning at odds with her part, and Alderton is amusingly discomfited by a predatoriness he has not expected — could hardly be more repellent.
Somehow Danny La Rue, in his show at the Prince of Wales, although conceivably lewder than anything in Judies, is not repellent at all. La Rue's whole act as a female impersonator is compounded of just such contradictions. Despite material that is a mire of innuendo, his performance contrives to seem more elegant than offensive. His sunny cheerfulness curiously rejuvenates jokes that are often as old as they are ribald. He presents a plausible illusion of femininity but instantly denies the illusion by swaying seductively downstage to growl a hoarse, "Wotcher, mates!" into the microphone. He has clearly studied the characteristics of the female in lurid, fluttering detail, but it is on caricature rather than verisimilitude that he bases his impersonations: the wigs are, of course, too mountainous to be. worn by a real woman, the fluttering eyelashes too long to be taken quite seriously and he is at his funniest and most effective when he purports to be some specific lady — say, Princess Anne" or Elizabeth Taylor — whom he does not in the least resemble. The show he's in is gaudy and gorgeous, and if you share my weakness for the outrageous nerve of the star, it will pass a couple of hours very agreeably.
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