The latest production from the Old Joint Stock’s touring arm, visiting pub gardens across England, is this outdoor comic extravaganza based loosely on the Sherlock Holmes canon.
We are in the great detective’s local pub, The Bitter of the Baskervilles. A foreign visitor has found his way there, where the barman and two of his regulars have tales to tell about their encounters with Holmes.
Writer Adam Meggido (of Showstoppers fame) clearly enjoys the stories, the stereotypes, and the silliness. He sprinkles songs through the narrative that will make you smile, mainly from the 70s and 80s.
Will Batty, Will Hamilton, Imogen Vickers, and David Haller are the actors driving this show along, with direction by Emily Susanne Lloyd and music by Gaby Ball.
Each actor is also a singer and musician, which gives the show a cohesive feel and an improvisational edge. Audience members are roped in and singled out; actors are as mobile as is possible in a beer garden crowded with tables.
The barman, Irish and superstitious, has the last tale, one of fog, curious sounds and unsettling scents. The actress is pleased to have been saved from trial for murder. And the taxi driver shows exceptional bravery ‘defying gravity’.
Each actor throws themselves into the storytelling, playing a range of characters with just a change of hat or picking up an instrument. Now and again the staging is a bit too ambitious for the space making a couple of sequences hard to see further back than the front row.
But there is no criticising the energy and enjoyment the team put across in their embrace of these silly tales and their affectionate spoof of cases such as “The Beast of Baker Street”.
Each actor brings their own strengths and skills to The Bitter of the Baskervilles. Hamilton is physically funny, Batty is hilarious as a deranged Dr Watson, Vickers has a great voice and good reactions, and Haller adds a dour authority.
3.5 stars.
Sherlock Holmes and The Bitter of the Baskervilles has been touring outdoors this summer and is produced by Old Joint Stock.
Photo credit: Perro Loco Productions