Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles at the New Vic
The opening of The Hound of the Baskervilles, at Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic until March 14, was as chilling as Conan Doyle himself could have wished for. Wind whistled in the dark, a door creaked open, a shadow of a man lit a cigar as mist thickened around him, and ‘a frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins,’ writes John Hargreaves.
Then the house lights came up for a joke ‘terror’ warning. Anyone in the audience with a heart condition or nervous disposition was invited to leave, no shame attached. Exit Conan Doyle but no one else. This meta theatrical interruption, repeated to huge comic effect later, was done at no risk. Everyone involved in the production must have known they had an out-and-out crowd pleaser on their hands.
While following the plot essentials of the novel, this adaptation by Steven Canny and John Nicholson from 2007 has much in common stylistically with the New Vic’s productions of ‘The 39 Steps’ and ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’, with a passing nod to ‘The Play that Goes Wrong’ and the Reduced Shakespeare Company. It’s madcap, unabashedly silly, and performed with a comic gusto that proves infectious.
‘What’s going on?’ Watson asks. ‘The game’s afoot,’ Holmes answers. And it’s afoot at high speed. There are rapid comings to and from 221B Baker Street and Dartmoor as the pair court calamity whether falling out of trains or falling into bogs. There’s a bizarre visit to the London Steam Rooms, ditto encounters with country yokels selling critters in bags. There are more accents bandied about than mires on the moor, multiple declarations of love from unlikely directions, and sexual innuendos created out of the local geological features.
The physical agility of the actors is key to it all working. They each play multiple parts, with costume changes and entrances and exits executed as if by magical sleight of hand. The sometimes clumsy plotting of the novel, much of it told in prosaic explanations by Watson, isn’t entirely expunged in this adaptation but that is no fault of the cast or the director, Joyce Branagh.
The character of Sherlock Holmes has ever been ripe for hamming up but Alex Phelps has no need to push the boundaries. His arrogance and presumption come with something akin to a baby face, which works well as his foil, Doctor Watson, is an absolute idiot.
Alyce Liburd is adept at wringing maximum humour out of her bumbling character, contrasting the extreme lethargy of Watson’s brain cells with a remarkable litheness of his limbs.
Tom Richardson plays Sir Henry Baskerville as the antithesis of the ‘steady eye and quiet assurance of bearing which indicates a gentleman.’ He’s a brash Canadian who wears a Stetson and more than once loses his trousers. He also found himself more than once in the delightful position of having to hold back his own laughter.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is on until March 14 at the New Vic, to book, head to newvictheatre.org.uk/productions/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles
