Baskervilles is a fun slice of Sherlock
It’s only fitting during this upside down season of the Shaw Festival that they save the best show for last, giving you only two-and-ahalf months to see it.
Yes, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” — which opened Saturday at the Festival Theatre — is everything this season has been lacking. Engaging. Entertaining. A crowd-pleasing show that doesn’t rely on gimmicks
Why did this not open earlier in the season, when it could have been packing in crowds all summer? It seems pretty … elementary.
Probably because it had to make way for Stephen Fry’s bloated “Mythos,” which was three times as long but not nearly as fun as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most popular Holmes tale. This is the show that should have opened the season, not closed it.
Whatever its bizarre scheduling, it’s great to have him back for the first time since a superb Christopher Newton-directed 1994 production of “Sherlock Holmes” starring Jim Mezon (who, by the way, is sorely missed this season). For this, the Canadian première of a new adaptation by R. Hamilton Wright and David Pichette, Damien Atkins plays the private detective with the requisite melodrama and comic timing.
We see the burden of Holmes’ brilliance early on, shooting opiates in his office to relieve the boredom of not working a case. His brain is like a finely-tuned sports car — it needs to keep running or rust sets in.
So he’s thrilled when a doozy falls in his lap: A doctor comes to him with concerns after the suspicious death of his friend Charles Baskerville near his
estate. With Charles’ Canadian nephew Henry (Kristopher Bowman) now heir to Baskerville Hall, he fears the family curse will also claim him — a supernatural hound from hell that has stalked the family since one of the old, creepy Baskervilles made a deal with the devil. Everyone doubts the tale, until they hear the demon dog howling in the moors.
Holmes dispatches trusty aid Dr. Watson (a delightful Ric Reid) to the state to get the lay of the land. Naturally, it’s a place where the neighbours hate each other, the butler (Patrick Galligan) acts all creepy, and walking in the moors at night is like a scene out of “An American Werewolf in London” — there’s something out there.
The joy of Doyle’s story is that it works as both horror and comedy. This version leans more toward laughs, directed with a snappy, quick pace by Craig Hall on a simple but nicely designed stage by Dana Osborne, with video projections by Jamie Nesbitt giving it a widescreen movie feel.
Even at three hours (with two intermissions), there are no lulls, and Atkins’ manic take on Holmes is a delight throughout. He’s like a cellphone surrounded by dial-ups, breaking down every possible outcome with computer precision until the answers becomes obvious.
That makes it especially troubling when a London fog rolls in just before the final act — he took everything into account except the weather.
Hall and the cast embrace the silliness down the stretch, which may irk the more earnest fans of the detective but is welcome relief at the tail end of this Shaw season. Why there weren’t more shows like this in 2018 is the real mystery.