Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater provides a thrilling mystery to sharpen your senses in the Midwest premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Holmes and Watson. The story is set three years after the conclusion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem,” in which the famed detective appears to perish alongside arch nemesis Professor Moriarty in a plunge from the top of Reichenbach Falls. Now Doctor Watson has been called upon by Doctor Evans, keeper of a chilling island asylum, to determine whether one of three patients claiming to be the famed detective is the real Sherlock Holmes back from the dead. Hatcher’s plot is marvelously clever in construction and stylistically faithful to Conan Doyle’s world.
Director Joseph Hanreddy notes, “Rather than the three characters being the archetypes of a ‘Holmes personality,’ they are shaped by whatever we are led to believe are the circumstances after The Falls.” While this certainly bears out in the writing and characterization, the production nevertheless supplies a very satisfying kaleidoscope of Holmesian tropes.
Patient 1 (Ryan Imhoff) is clinically rational, cold and self-assured—Sherlock the intellectual and detective. Patient 2 (Grant Goodman) is passionate, volatile and given to talking about the inexorable pull of “his weakness”—the Holmes we find at his most manic and vexed by cocaine or “The Woman.” Patient 3 (Rex Young) is deaf, mute and blind—he brings the sort of trauma-induced poetry to the role suited only to a Holmes stricken with despair.
In the role of Watson, Norman Moses shines for the grounding he brings to the story. It’s easy to follow what’s going on when intelligent everyman Watson is leading you through his own deductive process. Opposite him, Mark Corkins plays the asylum director, aptly endowed with many of the funniest lines, as well as a dark sense of determination. Maggie Kettering smartly handles a dual role and is particularly striking as The Woman in a state of amnesia: spectral, vulnerable and deceptively resilient. Eric Damon Smith rounds out the cast in various smaller roles, especially memorable as a sinister orderly in a grime-stained apron.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Production elements endow the piece with gothic grandeur. Bill Clarke’s scenic design features towering walls painted to look like the metal cage of a Victorian institution, and a steam punk chandelier bathes the action in the eerie glow of enormous Edison bulbs. Lighting designer Michael Chybowski and projection designer Mike Tutaj have gone all out with a plot that features many stormy atmospheric effects and immersive moving images.
A fast-paced and thoroughly satisfying addition to the Sherlock Holmes universe, Holmes and Watson is a decisive success that will make you laugh and keep you guessing from curtain to curtain.
Through Dec. 17 in the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, call 414-224-9490 or visit milwaukeerep.com.
