Alvin — William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes
Alvin — William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes is an article published in The Pittsburg Press on 25 november 1900.
About the play Sherlock Holmes at Alvin Theater, Pittsburgh, PA (USA).
Article
ALVIN — The detective has seldom acted a very important part in first class plays. Occasionally his services have been required by the dramatist, but the audience was rarely initiated into the mysterious process by which he fastened the crime upon the supposed culprit or tracked the rascal to his hiding place. More often the villain was foiled in the good old-fashioned way by a chance discovery; by the betrayal of his secret by some confederate or by a friend who had become acquainted with his rascality, and who remained quiet until the time was ripe for the curtain to fall upon a pair of united lovers. When a detective was necessary, the merest outline of his work was given and the audience had a hint of the result of his investigation, William Gillette has changed all this and made the detective a personage, On a hitherto unpublished episode in the life of Sherlock Holmes, by Dr. A. Conan Doyle, Mr. Gillette has written a play of modern times, in which the great defective appears, a unique creation, and around whom all interest centers. On the stage, Mr. Gillette has, with his acknowledged genius, presented the detective to the physical eye and shown him to be an absorbingly fascinating fellow who treats a "case" in much the same scientific way that Agassiz would the bone of a fish, constructing his theories and drawing his inferences with mathematical nicety. Nothing like him has been seen behind the footlights before, and so entertaining and interesting has he become that his popularity is practically unbounded. This is evidenced by the fact that for thirty-six weeks last season Mr. Gillette played "Sherlock Holmes" at the Garrick Theater, New York, to standing room at each performance, a record as rare as it is enviable. The author-actor sprang a surprise the first night and at the end of the engagement theater patrons were still surprised. With an energy that was most convincing, and a coolness that was glacial, the hero of the play went through adventures that would ordinarily be guaranteed to turn a man's hair gray in an hour, and yet he maintained an unruffled exterior. The engagement here promises to be one of the most popular of the season. The production will be identically the same as was seen at the Garrick theater, New York.
