Mr. William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes (article 6 may 1902)
Mr. William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes is an article published in The Manchester Courier on 6 may 1902.
About the play Sherlock Holmes at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, UK.
Mr. William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes
The stage version of Sherlock Holmes is very much like a pyrotechnic set-piece: it has its sensational flashes, but it is all palpably premeditated and pre-understood. Exactly at the same moment that you feel excited, you see the falseness of it all and laugh. And this grows irritating.
There was a packed house at the Theatre Royal last night to test the dramatic fibre of the stage Holmes, and interest ran high in expectation, though it fell to a lower level in realisation. It is one thing spending an odd half-hour over one of Conan Doyle's ingenious and crisply-told stories and quite another "making a night" of them at the theatre. Besides, the old trouble arises afresh of the vast difference between the fascination of printed pages and that of simple dialogue, heard from across the footlights. The two things are wide apart, and cannot be transplanted with success once in a hundred experiments. The Sherlock Holmes seen last night is a very different personage to the man in the book. His wonderful deductions are too artificial, and his "sang froid" is too well studied. In a word, he steps down from a place on the bookshelves alongside Gaboriau, and gets into a pigeon-hole of Adelphi melodramas. It is rattling, blood-stirring melodrama, it must be admitted, but it appeals to crude tastes and sends one home with much the same feelings as after hearing a murder trial or seeing a fight in the streets.
Mr. William Gillette gives an admirable study of the detective hero. One readily admits the quiet force of his acting, and the many clever points he makes in the delineation of the character as Dr. Doyle drew it in his pages. The characteristic limpness, the sudden activity when action is necessary, the moodiness, the unostentatious heroism are all traits which cannot be mistaken, and amidst the thrilling improbabilities of the plot they stand out distinctly and rivet attention. Even when he unloads a pistol with one hand, and without the observation of the lynx-eyed Moriarty, one does not complain. He does it so splendidly-what matters the absurdity! The piece was warmly received, and will doubtless attract good houses. It is undoubtedly well worth seeing, quite apart from mere curiosity. The only danger is that the spectator may be in a critical mood. To paraphrase Mr. George Meredith, to begin to think is the beginning of disgust of the drama. Sherlock Holmes himself would pull it to shreds in five minutes and not find it necessary to light his pipe in the process.
