The Theatres: Sherlock Holmes
The Theatres: Sherlock Holmes is a review written by W. Moy Thomas published in The Graphic on 14 september 1901.
The article is about the Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette's play : Sherlock Holmes performed in London at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in 1901.
The Theatres: Sherlock Holmes
The new play, in which Mr. Gillette and his American company made their appearance on Monday evening at the Lyceum, lends, it must be confessed, but little support to the theory that melodrama is in a declining way. That a play in which Dr. Conan Doyle's immensely popular detective hero is the central figure and prime mover must needs be more or less melodramatic is obvious enough; but Sherlock Holmes is not merely a melodrama; it is a melodrama of that decided type which it has been customary to distinguish by the epithet "suburban." In such pieces it is indispensable that there should be a packet of documents which is the object of a long-sustained game of hide and seek; that astute and daring villains should be confronted again and again with cool and collected champions of persecuted innocence; that heroines should be kept in durance by cunning rogues for their own base purposes; that brave men, too habitually disregardful of their own personal safety, should allow themselves to be decoyed into vile dens, whence they only escape with their lives by dint of marvellous feats of agility and boundless exhibitions of tact and resource. All these, with a score of other conditions — not forgetting the hero's revolver, so quietly and watchfully brought or bear upon his antagonist that the latter can never get at chance of firing his own weapon first are duly fulfilled in Sherlock Holmes, otherwise The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner. As a literary production, the adaptation can claim little merit; but it is, nevertheless, an ingenious piece of its kind, and one in which the dramatic situations are handled with considerable skill and knowledge of stage craft. It has, above all, the great merit of sustained movement, and, finally, it is extremely well acted. Mr. Gillette's impersonation of Sherlock Holmes will not disappoint the admirers the great detective. The actor's habitually calm and impressive manner lends itself effectively to the portrait of this incarnation of cool self-reliance; and he is particularly happy in the art of giving point in an unobtrusive way to the dry humour and epigrammatic smartness which so often distinguish his utterances. Unfortunately, the nature and plan of the story forbid any adequate development of its sentimental side which lies in the growing attachment between the Detective and the persecuted Miss Faulkner, though the latter part is touchingly played by Miss Maude Fealy. The astuteness of Sherlock's unscrupulous antagonist, Professor Moriarty, who plans assassinations with such engaging frankness, is too often belied by facts to win respect for that terrible personage whose wrists are finally fitted, in strictly orthodox fashion, with the detective's "Darbies ;" but Mr. Abingdon is second to none in characters of this sinister stamp, and the part is played by him on the whole very impressively. The play is picturesquely mounted, and, though some disapprobation was manifested on the night of the first performance, it may well be that the patrons of melodrama, turned away from the newly rebuilt and renamed Adelphi, will for a considerable time to come be found seeking consolation at this neighbouring house.
Dr. Watson (Mr. P. Lyndal), Sherlock Holmes (Mr. William Gillette)
"Sherlock Holmes" at the Lyceum: A Scene from Act II.
From a Photograph by Byron, New York.
