Sherlock Holmes (article 5 december 1900)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Sherlock Holmes is an article published in The Chicago Tribune on 5 december 1900.

About the play Sherlock Holmes at Powers' Theater, Chicago, USA.


Article

The Chicago Tribune (5 december 1900, p. 4)

A play in four acts, by William Gillette. Founded on A. Conan Doyle's Detective Sketches. Presented at Powers' Theater by William Gillette and his company.

THE CAST.


In the absorbing nature of its story as much as in the thrills which are set into the narrative lies the spell of "Sherlock Holmes." That this is so is a merit William Gillette, the dramatist, may claim without infringing upon the rights of William Gillette, the actor. "Sherlock Holmes" is a dramatization of the character of Dr. Doyle's detective, but not a dramatization of any story or series of stories in which his literary creator allowed him to figure. Mr. Gillette has paid the novelist for the right of using his hero on the stage and then has built around the personality a new framework of action. So no matter how familiar the members of the audience may be with the "Sherlock Holmes" sketches, they find pictured on the stage no incident which can bore them through old acquaintanceship. Yet all the interest in the detective himself is retained. It is as if the Sherlock Holmes we all know were going through a new adventure in his career. And the tale told on the stage keeps its suspense to the end as cleverly as if it were one of the number written on the pages of the book. "Sherlock Holmes" is melodrama of the frankest and of the best.

Since its hold is so much in the startling and the unexpected turns of the stage recital it would be the height of unfairness to make a review the means of enlightening the public of the incidents of the performance. Their effect upon an audience will serve as well to show the nature of the play, and last night's hearers will take the place of models. The way the exciting features of the evening were received was indeed hardly less diverting than the events behind the footlights. While climaxes were being reached the theater was still to the point of oppression, but in the breathing spells the moments Sherlock Holmes outwitted plotters the reactions came. No sooner was the strain of a situation off than every other person in the house seemed to be seized with a fit of coughing. Nerves were being settled.

Likely they will be calmed thus every night, for the most blasé theater-goer is not apt to withstand the Gillette artifices. He may declare boldly that he is won by artifices, but he probably will save even that declaration for the moment he is outside the theater. The stage lighting itself is made to minister to the somber shadings of the melodrama. Deeds of darkness, it is a dictum, require gloom to be fittingly mapped out and carried to their sinister conclusion. The dim lighting of an underground dungeon in which Professor Moriarty holds audience with trusty criminals and of a chamber in which the detective's foes expect to leave his body are, therefore, not surprising. But Mr. Gillette has gone much further than that. He has every scene fade away in darkness and grow gradually from darkness. The device is a novelty in stage management and it suits the play.

Before being taken from the dramatist to the actor, some few may expect a comparison between "Secret Service" and "Sherlock Holmes." Disappointment, however, will be their portion. The plays are too unlike to be compared, either for merits or faults. Both, indeed, are melodramas, and good melodramas, but there the points in common cease, save perhaps one: the love story in both is trifling and in both the hero gives up an advantage unfairly won when he sees that a girl is the victim. It is a note of renunciation, struck low, but not uncertainly. When the two plays are alike off the stage, "Secret Service" may be rated the higher, but there is no reason to believe "Sherlock Holmes" cannot keep the stage as long as its immediate predecessor.

How much the acting of Mr. Gillette will have to do with the outcome may be regarded as being as problematical in one play as in the other. "Secret Service" failed when first brought out with another actor in the rôle of the spy, and was a tremendous success when he took his self-contained manffer into the part. He has been in "Sherlock Holmes" from the first. and from that first its success began. He is Sherlock Holmes, but he also has been every character he ever has played. Or. perhaps. the statement should be reversed to read: "Every character he has played has been [illegible]." Being a dramatist as well as an actor. he has been able to fit himself better than any playwright could do. He knows his own measure. The character of Sherlock Holmes, however, he found wonderfully available. Had the novelist sought for a lay figure, and in the search have met the actor he would have known he had found the man he wanted. Even the actor's liking for tobacco has a niche for itself.

It is not possible to say Mr. Gillette does realistic acting in the play, and yet that is just what the temptation is to say, such is the unrestraint of his methods. Perhaps a compromise might be reached by saying he acts with realism in unrealistic situations. He at least goes through the most blood-curdling episodes with the same quietness with which he lights his cigar and his pipe. He acts himself as the public knows him, and that certainly is personal realism.

The company which supports him is well organized, and some of the parts stand clearly out. George Wessels, in the role of the criminal leader, Professor Moriarty, does some old-style melodramatic acting hat could not be better placed. His scene with Holmes in the Baker street residence is one of the best played in the play, though his picturesque opportunity comes in the underground headquarters over which he presides. Maude Fealy gives a pleasing portrayal of Alice Faulkner, the young girl who held the papers which led to the tangle and who taught the skeptical detective the meaning of love. Olive Oliver was an adventuress who looked the class. A boy, Henry McArdle, in the part of a bright office boy, gained an attention well earned. Mr. Gillette will play here for four weeks.





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