YORK Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden is directing a new retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective novel The Hound Of The Baskervilles with pantomime villain David Leonard spending his summer as Sherlock Holmes.
Like Mike Kenny's adaptations of The Legend Of King Arthur in the summer of 2013, The Wind In The Willows in 2014 and The Railway Children last summer, it will be a family show, this time one that promises to be a "wildly entertaining version told by a travelling troupe of lightning-fast Victorian players".
Leonard will head up a cast of six actor-musicians who each will play a variety of different roles in a show being created and developed during rehearsal by the cast, the director and dramaturg Richard Hurford, using music, shadow puppetry and the magic of theatre to tell the tale of the dreaded hound as an original and humorous extravaganza.
"The unpredictability in the show will be in the telling of the story, not the narrative which is there already, so we've been devising the form to tell it," says Damian. "Here you have the story, you have the characters, the question is how do we tell it and within what context?
"So we decided it would be a Victorian piece that would be told by a small company of slightly larger-than-life characters, like in a Victorian melodrama, and we all love a melodrama, don't we."
Conan Doyle’s mystery story is set on Dartmoor, where legend has it that the Baskerville family are haunted and hunted by a gigantic hound, whose appearance announces their impending death. As the latest member of the family succumbs to the curse, Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Dr Watson assist the heir to the estate by investigating the mystery before someone else comes to a grisly end.
Director Damian Cruden. Picture: Elly Ross
Designer Mark Walters is taking the Baskerville story back to its original gothic Victorian roots, while musical director and cast member Rob Castell is provide a new score to be performed and sung by Leonard, Rachel Dawson, Joanna Holden, Ed Thorpe, Elexi Walker and himself.
In the tradition of travelling companies run by actor-managers, the cast will pick up assorted roles, playing parts across the gender divide, whatever is necessary with the resources on hand. "British theatre invented the character actor and you get that sense of theatre being bawdy and tricksy and then put that up against a story of the supernatural: the crime, the criminal, the red herring and the people that ignore the crime because it suits them to do so," says Damian.
Playing opposite Leonard's Sherlock Holmes will be Elexi Walker's Dr Watson, a female Dr Watson, you will note. "Holmes and Watson was one of the very early partnerships and it's still popular, however it is played," says Damian.
"Today Dr Who is the astral Sherlock Holmes, essentially the same character, with his assistant beside him, as he pits himself against evil, essentially a set of scientific, logical problems that need to be solved."
Casting Leonard and the younger Walker has brought a new dynamic to the Holmes and Watson relationship. "Because Elexi is younger, it has that feeling of Holmes being the teacher and Watson the student, which works really well with Holmes as the father figure, allowing him to be more giving and less belligerent towards Watson," says Damian.
Leonard was always in Cruden's mind when he was thinking of who should be his Holmes. "I said, 'if I do Sherlock Holmes, would you be interested?', and he said, 'oh yes'. David is so dexterous with language, as we know from the pantomime, and you expect that with Holmes, who has a lexicon of language that he uses to devour the opposition," says Damian.
"He's also a hugely skilled, hugely technical actor with a huge range of skills; he can dance, he can sing; he's skilful with his voice; he's incisive with his thoughts; he's well read; he brings a lot more to his work than people realise. David also always lets the story sit at the front, rather than making it a show about him."
York Theatre Royal presents Sherlock Holmes: The Hound Of The Baskervilles, July 29 to August 27. Tickets for the 7pm evening shows and 2.30pm matinees are on sale on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
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