Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes - Stage

Stage

The actor most associated with Holmes on stage was William Gillette, who wrote, directed, and starred in a popular play entitled Sherlock Holmes in seven different productions on Broadway from 1899 (filmed in 1916), while the stories were still being published, to 1930. His version of Holmes, dressed in deerstalker hat and Inverness cape and smoking a large curved calabash pipe, contributed much to the popular image of the character. There are occasional hints of the deerstalker hat in Paget's original illustrations for The Strand, but it is by no means a regular accoutrement. Doyle's text is even vaguer, referring only to a travelling cap with earflaps in the passages with the relevant illustrations. He is also described as smoking several different types of pipes, varying them with his mood.

While Gillette is the most well known stage actor to portray Holmes, the first was John Webb. Webb assayed Holmes in a play written by Charles Rodgers in 1894.

Sherlock Holmes works undercover as a missionary named Willie Cook in an unfinished play by L. Frank Baum and Emerson Hough called The King of Gee-Whiz. At the behest of an oracle, Cook is boiled into soap with a Marie Corelli novel, but somehow escapes and reveals himself as Holmes at the end of the play, in which he is married to an Incan widow, who mourns the apparent death of Cook, and whose children recognize Holmes as their father. The 1905 scenario for the play was first published in The Musical Fantasies of L. Frank Baum, edited and with an introduction by Alla T. Ford, in 1958.

The calabash pipe is associated with Sherlock Holmes because early portrayers, particularly William Gillette and Basil Rathbone, made an artistic decision to use something large and easily recognized as a pipe. A calabash pipe has a large air chamber beneath the bowl that provides a cooling and mellowing effect. Holmes preferred harsh and strong tobaccos and therefore would eschew such a pipe. In fact, most stories, particularly The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, described him as preferring a long-stemmed cherry-wood or a clay pipe.

In the first twenty years of the 20th century, Harry Arthur Saintsbury played Holmes on stage in Gillette’s play more than 1,400 times. In subsequent revivals of this production, Holmes was played by John Wood, John Neville, Patrick Horgan, Robert Stephens and Leonard Nimoy. Frank Langella played Holmes in a 1981 production for HBO.

A number of plays, two musicals -- Baker Street, and Sherlock Holmes: The Musical -- and a ballet have been written around Holmes.

Composer Jon Deak wrote a work for solo double bass based on The Hound of the Baskervilles, complete with narration and sound effects to mimic radio plays of the 1920s.

In the Summer of 2010, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes by Jeremy Paul was revived at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End officially opening July 20, directed by Robin Herford (who directed The Woman in Black) and starring television actors Peter Egan as Holmes and Robert Daws as Watson. The original production was staged in the West End in 1988 with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke reprisiong their television roles as Holmes and Watson. This psychological drama is an exploration of the inner torments of Baker Street’s most famous resident and an examination of the friendship between Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Following Holmes’s seemingly fatal encounter with his nemesis Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, Watson finds his loyalty and friendship tested to the very limit while the great man is forced to confront his hidden demons.