Gillette as the Detective (article 9 october 1900)
Gillette as the Detective is an article published in The Brooklyn Citizen on 9 october 1900.
The play was the William Gillette "Sherlock Holmes" performed at the Montauk Theatre, Brooklyn, NY (USA).
Article
MELODRAMA AT LOCAL HOUSES.
Brooklyn Audiences Get Money's Worth of Excitement.
GILLETTE AS THE DETECTIVE.
The first appearance of "Sherlock Holmes" in this borough, albeit on a wet and inauspicious night, drew a large throng of the well-to-do class of playgoers to the Montauk Theater, where his clairvoyant powers of inference, his marvelous ingenuity and his cool interpidity in the face of danger were placed on public view. The fame of William Gillette's portrayal of the detective had traveled far and wide. In him the audience behald a tall, faultlessly arranged figure, the visage clean-cut, serious, of a chalky pallor, the manner and movements of an almost supernatural. phlegm, the voice sepulchral and monotonous (save in some brief flash of passion or humor) as the intonation of a prayer or the reading of a service for the dead. If one asked himself in candor whether such a depictment were lifelike, the answer was negative. Concerning its theatrical effectiveness there was no doubt whatever. Holmes, dry, gaunt, self-contained, creature of A. Conan Doyle and William Gillette's imaginary, dominated every scene. in which he appeared. Even when absent in the wings, his spell was alike on the actors and the audience.
As to the play, every spectator at the Montauk will bear witness that it is one of the most ingenious and exciting melo- dramas that have ever been presented for, the local delectation. It cuts boldly away from many of the current conventions, does not harrow with ill-judged pathos, nor present a congeries of motives and characters which can be read off like an A B C primer by the experienced theater-goer. Its predominant interest (for the love episode does not greatly count) is a battle for life between an astute criminal. operator in the person of Professor Moriarty and the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes. The improbabilities are numerous as falling leaves in October, but the theme is developed with a skill that baffles and stimulates the interested spectator, leading him from surprise to surprise and from disclosure to disclosure through an unflagging narrative set forth in four acts beginning with the detective's bearding of the Larrabee family and his first interview with Alice Faulkner to the capture of the defeated gang and the young woman's ultimate complete surrender to her analyst-wooer. Severally, Holmes's seats of mental legerdemain, Professor Moriarty's infantile scheme of revenge by personal interview, the detective's needless fool hardiness, the too easy defeat of the would-be murderers in the Stepney gas-chamber — severally, I say, many of the incidents are absurd, baldly stated and standing alone. In the well-constructed story and eked out by Gillette's striking individuality and intense sincerity, they are received with unquestioning faith and enthusiastic approbation. Of course, the actor-author's dry humor does much to relieve the tension even of these scenes.
Moriarty was played as a doddering but intellectually vigorous old criminal by Geo. Wessels, who omitted no note of eccentric emphasis while he yet invested it with a certain power. The personation was on the ragged edge of burlesque, but the actor saved it from the precipice. Frederick Truesdell was a fair Doctor Watson. Ralph Delmore a conventionally wicked Larrabee, and George Honey a cockney burglar. Ruben Fax, as John Forman, the detective's spy and handy man, was rather good. So was Henry McArdle as Billy, the boy factotum. Miss Maude Fearly [1] imparted the requisite tenderness to the character of Alice Faulkner. She was somewhat out of the part, though, in the first act, as the girl seeking revenge.
- ↑ Maude Fealy.
