I realize I am being a bit over-confident of the possibility that any of you may ever get the chance to see this play (The Hound of the Baskervilles by R. Hamilton Wright and David Pichette), or the chance that any of you have seen it in one of its previous incarnations, since it's a fairly recent play that was written in 2013, was first put on in Seattle and has been put on in various places in North America, and currently by a theatre company in my province in Canada. It's also been recorded CD, but I don't know if that does it justice, since while a lot of the humour is in the dialogue, some of it is also visual (such as the scenes where Sherlock is in disguise) and probably wouldn't translate to an audio version.

Last weekend in my post on this forum about The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, I alluded to a play adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles that my parents had attended. Luckily, I was able to go yesterday and I had a wonderful time. I could have put this in the "Good News" section, I realize, but I feel that this play deserves its place in the "Other Adaptations" section. Sorry if I'm being too presumptuous. But this play got me very excited.

Sherlock Holmes was played by an actor who I had seen in another play (that I had also thoroughly enjoyed) and he was fantastic! I hope he plays this character again one day in another play or on TV or film. Not exactly the same as the way Benedict portrays him, but certainly on the same level, if not better, with some of the same eccentricities.

It used projected backdrop, but also had quite a lot of setpieces that were moved in and out: stairways, chairs, the rocks on the moor, etc. In each of the three acts, I think there were at least 3 or 4 locations - train stations, different floors of Baskerville Hall, and the moor. But it all worked.
One of the most clever setpieces came out of a trap door in the middle of the stage. There is a scene where Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville descend a spiral staircase to go to the cellar in Baskerville Hall. The spiral staircase was in the trap door, but as the two actors descended it, it rose from the stage so that you could see them going down the stairs, and when they stepped off the stairs they were in the cellar. It was very cool!
Here's a photo I took at the end of the play, showing the rocks on the moors with the Hound's eyes projected behind. It was hard to get a good photo because of the low lighting on the stage contrasting with the bright house lights. The biggest rocks were taller than the actors and they climbed up on them and walked in and out from behind them, as did the Hound itself.



I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging, especially since I know this is a production that most, if not all, of you (being mainly dispersed around America, the UK, and Europe) will not get a chance to see. But I hope you do get a chance to see a production of it one day. I hope it makes its way around the world. I guess that's why I wanted to post about it here, so that it could be here for future reference. I think you all would have liked it.

The people who were in charge of the marketing for this play must have been influenced by our BBC series, though. Because the ads for the play used the phrase "The game is on," instead of "The game is/the game's afoot," the phrase that actually appears in this play since it takes place in Victorian times. I just thought that was a little amusing. I don't know how many people noticed, though.