Sherlock Holmes at the Montauk Theater
This article was published in The Brooklyn Citizen on 7 october 1900.
The play was the William Gillette "Sherlock Holmes" performed at the Montauk Theatre, Brooklyn, NY (USA).
Article
A TENSE SITUATION IN "SHERLOCK HOLMES" AT THE MONTAUK THEATER.
How, when in my teens, Poe and Collins, Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey stirred the blood! Detection as pictured in the story-books seemed the most fascinating occupation in which man could engage. Later Dr. A. Conan Doyle loomed up on the horizon, and his picture of intellectual astucity in the "Sherlock Holmes" series made me complete thrall. The minute special knowledge, the seizure upon accidental and seemingly insignificant clues, and the marvelous powers of inference possessed by his hero, contrasted delightfully with his confirmed solitariness of life, his dabblings in drugs and chemicals, his love of music and his appetite for cigars. I was angry with Doyle for killing Holmes; I was vexed with Gillette for his reported intention of resurrecting the great analyst, putting him. on the stage and endowing him with a "love interest." That Mr. Gillette's judgment was correct so far as hearty, public appreciation and patronage are concerned, the all-season run of his play at the Garrick Theater last year showed. Time has quenched the animosity aroused by Gillette's making free with my favorite, and I am quite willing to go to the Montauk Theater to-morrow evening and view his "Sherlock Holmes" in an impartial frame of mind.
The story as adapted by the author-actor deals with an episode in the detective's career connected with the strange case of Miss Faulkner. The young lady has in her possession a package of documents, compromising a great European personage: it is Sherlock Holmes' delicate task to get hold of these. In Professor Moriarty, the super-intellectual head of a band of criminal operators, he has an unrelentless foe. He also finds himself unexpectedly handicapped by an awakening passion for the young woman he seeks to circumvent. After a number of thrilling adventures, interspersed with a due proportion of love scenes, he defeats all his adversaries except Dan Cupid, to whom he surrenders gracefully.
"Bowery melodrama!" whisper some of my friends when "Sherlock Holmes" is mentioned. "The most exciting thing you ever saw!" say others. Between the two opinions one had best stay on the fence, while awaiting to-morrow's personal inspection. Gillette's repressed method of acting and his habit of smoking away at a black cigar during the tensest scenes of the drama, we may be sure, will be in evidence. For the rest, let us not inquire. too closely before the event.
