Who would have thought. . . .

John Wayne was fond of literature, his favorite authors being Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. His favorite books were David Copperfield, and Conan Doyle's historical novels The White Company and Sir Nigel.

A fun afternoon.

Like I said in this post, we were going to go see HOUN. at the Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock.

And we did.

The Lyceum is a small 400 seat theatre, so nobody sits to far away from the stage.

I took my ten year old daughter and she just loved it.

The play was pretty true to the story. Probably as much as a small stage production could do.

The show was lots of Doyle, part 'Sherlock' and a little bit of 'Without a Clue', all blended well together. Humor was kept to a minimum and used well.

The actor who played Watson did a fantastic job as did the supporting cast.
 The Sherlock Holmes character being the weakest. (Well Holmes wasn't all that much in HOUN anyway was he?) He was however given a couple more chances to be in disguise and fool Watson which played well with the audience and probably wasn't even noticed except by tru Sherlockians.

They used lighting and slide presentation well for atmosphere and scenes.

Beryl Stapleton's character was changed a bit and had her more involved with the crimes than the Canon did.
But again, it worked well in the small space.

Over-all; a very fun evening, a good production and if you are within a couple of hours you should go see it.

One of my favorites is gone - Seven Degrees of Sherlock Holmes - Robert Hardy

Robert Hardy 1925 - 2017
RAF Vet., Actor, historian, one of my favorites.

I first watched him in All Creatures Great and Small.

Sherlockians know him as Milverton in the Granada series.

He is also known to have read some Holmes stories for audio books.

Known more recently for his time spent in the Harry Potter movies.

He was also a keen historian on the English Long Bow.

He could make any dialogue sound elegant.

Are we over thinking Sherlock Holmes?

No really, maybe we are over thinking Sherlock Holmes.

As I came up as a Sherlockian most discussions were centered around details in the Canon (or lack of) and not Sherlock's proclivities.

Yea, sure, there were discussions about his sexual orientation (which I never understood) and how many times Watson was married to his moving wound many years ago. But seldom, if ever, did it become the center of the debate.
It, in and of itself, has become the backbone of many 'fans'.

Most of the time we explored history, details and 'things' within the stories; history of the martini, the 'dancing men' alphabet, what kind of dog was the 'Hound'.

So much debate (and sometimes not in a nice way) centers to much around what we desire Sherlock (or Benedict) to be rather than what we can discover just from the readings or research.

Sure, we can spend a lot of time arguing about whether or not Holmes would meet the Queen in just a sheet, or whether or not he could have been an over sexed ex-drug addict.

But in the end we are not really discussing the Canonical Sherlock Holmes.

With much of the recent, over the last several years, debate, we are trying to reshape a puzzle piece to fit into a different puzzle.

Lets all just relax a little and get back to our core.

Summer re-read, HOUND

While I usually like to re-read HOUN once the weather cools down a bit, for atmospheric reasons,
I am starting re-read it now at the height of summer for good reason.

The Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock Mo. is doing a stage presentation Aug. 5th - 13th.
It is a relatively small theatre as theatres in this area goes (450 seats).

Arrow Rock is a small historical town here along the Missouri River with artistic connections that go way back.

This will be my daughters first Sherlock Holmes play and we are going to make a weekend of it in Arrow Rock.