The Hound of the Baskervilles

This was a brave venture for The Queen's Hall Theatre Club, Hexham.  Based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes classic, re-written, directed and featuring (as Holmes), David Nixon, this version winks (rather broadly) at the audience to mock the conventions of theatre as well as the narrative of the original.  There are similarities, in style, to the recent stage version of The 39 Steps and, perhaps, the popular touring/West End comedies The Play That Goes Wrong, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and Peter Pan Goes Wrong.

The action opens in a reasonably conventional, amusing fashion but then commenced to break “the fourth wall” or Proscenium Arch.  This is common practise in pantomimes, children’s theatre and the modern comedies cited above.  To work effectively, however, it needs to be used sparingly, bringing the audience in surreptitiously, rather than ‘signposting’ the joke. My only spontaneous laugh was, I think, when a female “stagehand” engagingly tumbled across the stage with an aerosol can of stage smoke and a cast member commented “the mist is rolling in!”

I have previously seen the same company perform some hilarious farces, including the aforementioned 39 Steps and last year’s version of Ray Cooney’s Tom Dick and Harry.  This script, sadly, was not in the same league.  I hope the report is not perceived as too negative as the cast performed their roles well, but the ‘material’ was slightly underwhelming.  I have seen this group perform professionally written farces with great aplomb but, sadly, this script did not allow the actors to show their full potential.

The programme lists 33 actors who merge into backstage personnel.  It is not easy to deduce where one ends and the other begins.  David Nixon was a persuasive Holmes and wore a mean deerstalker, Robin Jowett was a totally believable Watson, Kevin Jones carried off the part of the Doctor with amusing confusion and the other actors took their Conan Doyle roles well, watching the mayhem going on around them, either with suitable bemusement or by stoically ignoring it.  Everyone involved clearly put in a great deal of work, including a small group of young dancers who, I thought, showed promise. I was bemused by there being four dancers initially who, for some reason, had to be increased to five by the addition of a burly stagehand.  Then, when they reappeared, one girl had disappeared, but the stagehand was still there.

Overall the cast played their roles well but would, I think, have fared better with different material

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.