At the Theaters Last Evening
At the Theaters Last Evening is an article published in The Pittsburg Post on 27 november 1900.
About the play Sherlock Holmes at Alvin Theater, Pittsburgh, PA (USA).
Article
The stage has no man more suited to realize Sherlock Holmes than William Gillette. You have read of that apotheosized sleuth and formed, of course, your idea of him. In the play you are likely to find him as you conjured him up in your imagination when deep in those delightful, dime-novelish romances of Dr. A. Conan Doyle.
Even though "Sherlock Holmes," the play, is melodrama of the most pronounced type, it is necessary to enthuse over it. The first Pittsburg audience to see it gave more and longer continued applause than has been granted any other stage offering of the season. Most of it came from the gallery, but in the parquet there was intense interest shown.
The play itself tells of an hitherto unpublished incident in the career of the detective, "The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner." Its episodes are wildly improbable and the action so swift one can barely follow it. It is nickle-plated revolver melodrama, but it is clever with the cleverness of William Gillette and absorbingly interesting. Gillette has always before been Gillette on the stage. This time he has "created" a character, the intellectual detective, cocaine fiend and lover. The latter phase of the character is not shown in the original stories and was, of course, dramatically necessary.
Briefly the story tells of a Miss Faulkner whose sister had been ruined by the scion of a noble house. She possesses papers in the case and the Larrabees, choice scoundrels, are attempting to use them for a blackmailing scheme. Holmes is employed to recover them and the Larrabees invoke the aid of Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime in London. The main theme is the battle of wits between Sherlock and Moriarty, the latter's triumph and love affair with the Faulkner girl.
It is impossible to give any idea of the many threads to the story. Sherlock is shown throughout ready in gun play, delivering himself of remarkable information acquired by his marvelous methods and extricating himself from tight places by quick action. Gillette makes up his face to the white, haggard appearance of a drug fiend, talks in a rapid monotone and carries himself with that air of repressed force of which he is so the master, occasionally breaking into furious action. In the second scene of the second act, in Holmes' apartments, the detective is shown taking a hypodermic injection of the drug. It is done so quickly, however, as to lose some of its offensiveness. An incident which gives a clue to the general type of the play is shown in the third act, which takes place in the Stepney gas chamber, where Holmes has been decoyed by Larrabee and where it is proposed to kill him. Miss Faulkner has gone there to deliver up the package and save his life, and they are surrounded. He dashed the lamp to the floor.
Larrabee shouts to his thugs to follow the glare of Holmes' cigar. When a light is found the cigar is discovered stuck in a crevice in a window, while Holmes and the girl have escaped by a door on the other side of the room.
A novelty is the use of dark changes. At the end of each act is a tableau, the lights are turned out and when they come on again the curtain is down. The last tableau shows Holmes and the girl, it having been previously explained that Holmes has given vs his drug habit.
Maude Fealy, a pretty little blonde. who made a hit in "Quo Vadis" in New York, plays Alice Faulkner daintily and effectively. Reuben Fax, of Svengali fame, does one of Holmes' right-hand men. George Honey as Sidney Prince and Fred Truesdell as Dr. Watson are also good. Olive Oliver contributes a great adventuress as Mrs. Larrabee, and Ralph Delmore's Larrabee is a perfect foll for Holmes. George Wessells makes a fine study of Prof Moriarty.
