Review: A Sherlock Holmes mystery at the Walnut. What is the ‘Speckled Band’?
The show is a gothic farce, with melodramatic music and lighting, rapid-fire costume changes, physical comedy, and wry literary jokes.
Bill Van Horn’s Sherlock Holmes — The Adventure of the Speckled Band isn’t much of a mystery. This modestly entertaining world premiere, on the Walnut Street Theatre’s Mainstage through March 27, is really a gothic farce, with melodramatic music and lighting, rapid-fire costume changes, physical comedy, and wry literary jokes.
Based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1910 three-act play, The Speckled Band (itself adapted from Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story), this Holmesian romp was commissioned by the Walnut’s producing artistic director, Bernard Havard. Van Horn not only wrote the two-hour show, updating the setting to circa 1920, he directs, with cleverness and comic brio. It’s his vision, after all.
He also casts himself as Holmes’ famous sidekick, Dr. Watson, who narrates the action — even when Holmes desperately exhorts him to shut up.
Playing opposite Van Horn, who’s terrific, is the estimable Ian Merrill Peakes. He doubles as Sherlock Holmes and the one-eyed Dr. Rylott, a retired Anglo Indian officer with a declining fortune, “cayenne pepper in his soul,” a weird menagerie of beasts, and a propensity for violence. Peakes digs into both roles — wily detective and obvious suspect — with his usual gusto.
Karen Peakes plays Enid Stoner, Rylott’s lovely stepdaughter, who fears for her life after her sister Violet’s demise. She’s also Mrs. Staunton, the housekeeper carrying a torch for Rylott.
Dan Hodge (as Mr. Armitage, the grocer who is Enid’s love interest, and the aging butler, Rodgers), Mary Martello (as a coroner and Holmes’ valet, Bentley), and Justin Lujan (as the peripatetic Ali) round out the energetic ensemble. All six actors also play various minor roles, assisted by Natalia de la Torre’s lush costumes, harking back to the Victorian era.
In the original short story, Watson declares the mystery of the speckled band to be “a dark and sinister business.” In the Van Horn version, the fright mostly gives way to laughter.
Act I takes place in the solarium of Rylott’s estate, Stoke Place, in Stoke Moran, Surrey. Stepdaughter Violet, whose engagement Rylott opposed, is dead, and Martello’s brisk coroner is interviewing a parade of eccentric witnesses. A year later, in Scene 2, the mystery lingers, and Enid, like her sister, has found a suitor.
Act II opens in Holmes’ wonderfully cluttered study at 221B Baker Street, where he decides to take the case. Together, he and Watson return to Stoke Place’s drawing room and then Violet’s old bedroom, where danger lurks.
Brian Froonjian’s set design frames the period rooms like pictures, underlining the show’s deliberate artifice. Shon Causer’s lighting and Christopher Colucci’s sound design work in tandem to heighten the gothic effects.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band turns out to be a mildly witty brew of old-fashioned jokes about colonialism, satire of the English class system, and jaunty self-mockery. The stagecraft is skillful, the familiar mystery is solved, and as Holmes puts it, “Moral order is restored.” Most important, this hardworking troupe of veteran actors seems to be having a grand old time. Don your mask (or not — it’s now optional at the Walnut) and calibrate your expectations, and it’s likely that you will, too.
“Sherlock Holmes — The Adventure of The Speckled Band,” presented by the Walnut Street Theatre, on the Mainstage, 825 Walnut St., through March 27. Masks optional; no vaccination check. Tickets: $25-$77. Information: www.walnutstreettheatre.org or 215-574-3550.