The Hound of The Baskervilles – Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch
Writer: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Adapters: Steven Canny & John Nicholson
Reviewer: Michael Gray
The Public Reviews Rating: 
It worked for The 39 Steps. It worked, in this very same house, for Travels With My Aunt. And now it’s the turn of Sherlock Holmes – deerstalker, meerschaum, magnifying glass and all – as he solves the mystery of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
This three-man adaptation, a “comedy thriller”, retains all the key elements of Conan Doyle’s story – hound, moors, family seat, Great Grimpen mire – and cheerfully twists them and sends them up something rotten.
Some might see the influence of Pirandello and Brecht, others panto and Little Britain. Whatever, the result is often excruciatingly funny, with surreal silliness and slapstick galore.
The stage is a spool of film, with old prints projected as a backdrop. There is also a movable door and lots of smoke. Underscoring the silent movie feel, an upright piano stage right, Puccini and Prokofiev pressed into service, played with style and sensitivity by Steven Markwick, who also gives us his coarse yokel.
All the other parts, though, are played by the talented trio of Simon Jessop, who is Watson throughout, Greg Last, who is Baskerville, a cabby, and the butt of many cruel jibes, and Jonathan Markwood, Holmes, both the Stapletons and, in a glorious Pythonesque moment, a hermit in a post box. They all three embrace the slightly desperate style the piece demands, slipping in and out of character, battling gamely against all odds to keep the show on the road. Jessop makes a bluff, often painfully dim sidekick, Markwood a suave Holmes in the Brett mould, and also enjoys hamming it up as the totally bonkers baddie brother and sister/husband and wife. Last’s relative inexperience is played upon, but his performance is in many ways the funniest of the three, as he bumbles through the perilous plot.
Necessity, in this genre, is the mother of invention and improvisation. Among many ingenious pieces of inspiration, the train carriage sequence (loved the luggage rack), the cab ride, the mire, the Turkish Bath and the ancestor portraits.
It is a bold move to stop the action a minute or so in for health and safety reasons, and then pick up again after some desultory banter and in-jokes. Even bolder, goaded by a critical interval Tweet, to recap the whole first act at a gallop before embarking on the second. Brilliantly done, piling on the pace, one of the best things in a constantly amusing show.
Until 17 November
The Hound of The Baskervilles - Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch,Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle, Bob Carlton, Christopher Howcroft, Conan Doyle, Cut to the Chase, Greg Last, Holmes, Hounds of Baskerville, John Nicholson, Jonathan Markwood, Little Britain, Norman Coates, Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, Sherlock Holmes, Simon Jessop, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven Canny, Steven Markwick
10:47 am on November 6th, 2012
I thought this was an absolutely awful production. Poor writing and poor staging. It was pedantic and aimed very low. If it was a school adaptation I could have forgiven it.