The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Female Sherlock looks to heights in new production
NEW HAVEN » “Sherlock Holmes and the Sapphire Night” is not your father’s adaptation of the fictional detective.
It’s being done mostly with a female cast, features physically demanding circus arts and makes feminist points along the way. When Sherlock’s mind runs in circles, she (yes, she) takes to the air, spinning on Spanish web (a rope to the ceiling with loops and swivel).
“Sapphire Night” will be performed Friday at 8 and Saturday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at ECA Arts Hall on Audubon Street, and then goes on a spring tour to Northampton and Sommerville, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, says director Stacey Kigner.
Two years ago, when Kigner’s Air Temple Arts circus school was based on State Street in New Haven, the group put on its first professional show, “Special Relativity — Circus Through Space and Time,” which Kigner said sold out all three shows. Last year’s was a similar show and result, she said. But those didn’t really have real plots; this one’s a hybrid of traditional theater and contemporary circus.
“The genesis of this show was I had the idea for doing a Sherlock Holmes original circus show ... about a year ago,” says Kigner, who also wanted to collaborate with Meghan Magner, a student at Air Temple Arts, now based in Woodbridge. The performing portion is now known as Circularity.
Kigner related her idea for a Holmes piece and told Magner she would make a good Sherlock.
Why Sherlock and circus?
“I thought it would be really fun,” Kigner said, especially with circus because it is a nonspeaking medium. I think it’s very helpful when you’re trying to tell narrative stories to sort of use a pre-existing structure that people are familiar with. So (circus) makes it easier for them to hop in and know what’s going on.”
In the story, Sherlock and Watson unravel the mystery of six missing young women and their connection with an enigmatic, star-gazing cult, which has a ritual involving the aerial hoop. While there was prerecorded narrative two years ago, now there are spoken Rehearsing a routine are, from left, Kalena Trow, Allison McDermott, Eliannah Hunderfund, Nicholas Cegelka, Meghan Magner, Jillian Marchenko, Megan Mallouk and Liz Cowell. scenes that require acting, although the script only totals about 30 pages, says Kigner. And there is a minimalist set.
Casting traditionally male characters as women was initially one of necessity, says Kigner, But... a female Sherlock and Watson?
“I think that one of the things that is definitely ... unique about this show is that we’re using Sherlock Holmes as the lens to explore a lot of different feminist and outsider questions and issues that we deal with today,” Kigner says. “So it is a Sherlock Holmes story ... but it’s taking these characters and setting of Victorian London and asking these really modern questions.”
Kigner says Holmes and Watson are societal outsiders so a woman helps make that point. And women play the police, who ask seemingly victimshaming questions when a woman goes missing. (And since they’re incompetent in the story, the lead detective performs a humorous diabolo act, which features those coned butterfly-shaped things that go back and forth — often called a Chinese yo-yo.)
There are 10 circus acts, Kigner says, all of which are set to music.
The show is about 90 minutes with intermission and is appropriate for children over 4. Tickets ($25, $20 for students and $40 for reserved VIP) are available at cirqularity.com.