The Speckled Band
Drayton Court Theatre
Playwright
In 1910 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took a lease on the Adelphi Theatre to produce The House of Temperley, a play he had written about boxing. It closed after three months. To make-up for his considerable financial losses he wrote this dramatization of one of the best known and most popular Sherlock Holmes adventures. At first he called it The Stonor Case but later reverted to calling it The Speckled Band.
Synopsis
Miss Enid Stoner pays a visit to the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. She tells Holmes about her ill-tempered stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Rylott, who has moved her into a particular room of his ancestral home. The room has some very odd features, including a bed bolted to the floor. It is also the room that Enid’s twin sister, Julia, had slept in before she died.
Review
Elementary Entertainment
Director Ken Bentley says in his programme notes that his cast will be going all out to provide what he believes to be the most important task in the theatre – entertaining the audience. They certainly succeed with this off-beat version of the classic Sherlock Holmes tale. Dramatised by Conan Doyle himself in 1910, The Speckled Band is a story of sudden and mysterious death in a forbidding manor house. It can be chilling fare, but this production plays it for laughs. However here lies a small problem – the play wasn’t written as a comedy and so all the laughs come from slapstick and playing the characters as weirdos. The cast do remarkably well on this score. Even the unavoidably lengthy scene changes provide opportunities for them to earn a few extra chuckles as they dash on and off stage in best Keystone Cops fashion.
The villain of the piece is Dr Grimesby Rylott, played in true Victorian melodramatic style by Andrew Dickens, although unfortunately without waxed moustache or black cape. The dynamic duo of Holmes and Watson (Nicholas Briggs and Daniel Gabriele) make a good double act, but the star turn is Rodgers the butler. Dougie Arbuckle pays homage to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo with his twisting, wheezing and club-footed portrayal of this minor character and very nearly steals the show. My only criticism would be that the wackiness doesn’t go far enough but I’m sure that as the run progresses and the cast gain confidence with this off-the-wall approach, the show will become even funnier.
Terry Bellamy
The Gazette
Cast
- Billy/Coroner
- John Albasiny
- Rodgers/Armitage/Loaming
- Dougie Arbuckle
- Mrs Soames/Mr Milverton
- Paul Betts
- Sherlock Holmes
- Nicholas Briggs
- Ali/Mr Montague
- Derek Carlyle
- Dr. Grimesby Rylott
- Andrew Dickens
- Enid Stoner
- Sam Dowson
- Dr. Watson
- Daniel Gabriele
- Mrs Staunton
- Rebecca Jenkins
Creative Team
- Lighting Design
- Derek Carlyle
Production Team
- Producer
- Drayton Court Theatre Company