Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club

Jeffrey Hatcher is an American playwright and screenwriter whose biggest success to date is the brilliantly tender and emotional two hander Tuesdays With Morrie (staged in Sydney several years ago by the Ensemble Theatre, resulting in a short regional tour).

Hatcher – obviously a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson judging by his adaptation of the Scottish author’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – has dipped his pen into the inkwell of Arthur Conan Doyle and concocted a mix of the canon’s popular character Sherlock Holmes and Stephenson’s little known short story The Suicide Club.

The resulting play, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, is the latest offering by Woy Woy Little Theatre.

The play works on some levels but not on others.

First time director Jessica Alex has shown she’s a force to be reckoned with.

She has taken her cast of 11 breathing life into a varied mix of personalities and should be pleased with the end result. All the cast are believable as members of the Suicide Club and other colourful characters who weave their way through the streets of London towards the hallowed portals of 221B Baker Street.

Denise Roberts (principal director in Screen Wise, one of the country’s most respected acting schools) was right when she said Beau Baker as Sherlock would deliver “quite a ride” in this production.

All actors need high energy levels to entice the audience into the story – Baker does this successfully throwing out a challenge to the other actors to ‘catch me if you can’.  The chase is on!

Tyrone McMaster runs equal with Baker, giving an excellent performance as Dr Watson, a solid, dependable – and occasionally wry – friend who introduces the audience to the adventure that follows.

A good cast adds to the success of this production with outstanding work from Kellie Martin as the mysterious Club Secretary, Andrew Thomson as Mycroft Holmes and Tiffany Tuffin as Christiane de LaBegassian, the fiancé of Nikita Starloff (Gavin Critchley).

Duncan Mitchell, Lex Tonnet, Mark Austin and John Lusty give good performances, as does Vicki Sidotti who plays three different characters.

Whilst rear projection has been used theatrically for several decades, credit must be given to the director for utilizing this (new to Woy Woy Little Theatre) technology, taking the story to different settings in London as the story unfolds. Perhaps this is the reason why the lighting was so subdued making it difficult to see some characters if they were upstage in some spots.

Where the play doesn’t work is no fault of the production team. The author has overwritten the story and there needs to be considerable tightening of the first act and at least fifteen minutes lopped from the second. This could be the reason why the play has not (to my knowledge) been staged by a major theatre company in Australia to date.

But well done Ms Alex, well done cast and crew and well done WWLT, who continue to present outstanding community theatre on the Central Coast.

John Bellchambers.