How do you go about
staging the complete works of Sherlock Holmes? It's a question even
Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional pipe-smoking detective hero himself
might have trouble with. It's nevertheless one which comically
inclined theatre troupe Peepolykus asked themselves when they decided
to make a new show. Audiences may or may well find out some kind of
answer in The Arthur Conan Doyle Appreciation Society, a new piece
scripted by Peepolykus founders Steven Canny and John Nicholson,
which opens this week at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, whose artistic
director, Orla O'Loughlin, directs.
“We knew that we
wanted to write something about Arthur Conan Doyle, and we thought it
might be an interesting idea to try and fit every Sherlock Holmes
story into one thing,” says Nicholson, who, alongside Peepolykus
regular, Javier Marzan and Scottish actress Gabriel Quigley, will be
performing in the new show. “We came up with an idea for that,
which felt like quite good fun, but it also felt like a bit of a
mountain to climb.”
This idea involved
Holmes leaping into another dimension to solve a case in the real
world, and forced to go beyond the material world to investigate the
nether-regions of the universe. To do this, Holmes would require to
understand the laws of nature and physics. Such notions aren't beyond
the realms of fictional possibility, with all sorts of super-heroes
having straddled parallel universes. One slip-up in the details of
Conan Doyle's four novel and fifty-six short story Holmes canon,
however, and the Sherlock Holmes fan-base would rumble Peepolykus as
liberty-taking theatrical Moriartys.
By way of a solution,
Peepolykus decreed to take an equally other-worldly look at Holmes'
creator. Given that for the last twenty years of his life Conan Doyle
became a confirmed spiritualist, this wasn't going to be too
difficult. Conan Doyle first looked to spiritualism for solace
following the death of his wife in 1906, and continued his interest
after the deaths of his son, brother, brothers-in-law and nephews.
Conan Doyle even believed that the famed photographs of the so-called
Cottingley Fairies, knocked up by two little girls in 1917, were
genuine, and wrote a book on the subject. Conan Doyle went on to have
a huge fall-out with world renowned magician Harry Houdini after he
refused to believe that Houdini used illusion in his stage act rather
than the supernatural powers Conan Doyle insisted that the American
was blessed with.
“Conan Doyle devoted
the last part of his life to spiritualism,” says Nicholson, “and
he felt very ambivalent about Sherlock Holmes, and killed him off,
but was forced to bring him back to life. It wasn't the thing he
wanted his literary legacy to be. He wanted his other work, and
particularly his spiritualist work, to come to the fore more. That
seemed like quite an interesting struggle, between Conan Doyle and
his creation, who were both very different. Aside from all that, we
wanted to put on a play about people trying to put on a play. That's
what defines a lot of Peepolykus' early, more devised work, and we
wanted to write a script that went back to that, and which could
bring in our characters own personal stories and struggles.”
The end result is a
faux illustrated lecture presented by a devotee of Conan Doyle,
played by Quigley, who brings on board two actors played by Nicholson
and Marzan to share her somewhat cranky obsession. The trio even have
a game bash at doing the collected Sherlock Holmes in a one-er.
“The actors we play
are using this as a bit of a platform,” says Nicholson. “They
know there might be people from the big Edinburgh theatres watching,
and think they might put their show on.”
This isn't the first
time Peepolykus have investigated Conan Doyle. In 2007 the company
staged their take on The Hound of the Baskervilles, probably Conan
Doyle's best-known Sherlock Holmes story. With Canny's script again
directed by O'Loughlin, the production broke box office records at
West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, before touring the UK and
transferring to the West End.
The success of The
Hound of the Baskervilles arguably pre-dated current hit comedies
such as One Man Two Guvnors and The Ladykillers, both of which
similarly took on already existing stories to tease audience
expectations. By reinvigorating such ripping yarns with playing
styles rooted in absurdist slapstick, European physical theatre and
1970s fringe theatre, these expectations were subverted enough to
take these shows into the commercial mainstream.
The Ladykillers
director, Sean Foley, was one half of The Right Size, another group
who morphed English archness with mime show knockabout to channel a
form of nouveau vaudeville. The Right Size went global with their
Morecambe and Wise homage, The Play What I Wrote.
It's telling too that
movement director for One Man, Two Guvnors was Cal McCrystal.
McCrystal's career as a clown and mime saw him only move into
directing after he was invited by Peepolykus to work on a show called
Let The Donkey Go, an Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit back in 1996. As
well as other Peepolykus shows, McCrystal went on to work on other
Peepolykus shows, as well as directing The Mighty Boosh's early
Edinburgh appearances before going on to work with Cirque du Soleil,
Sacha Baron Cohen and beyond.
“One Man, Two Guvnors
is a great show,” says Nicholson, “but in terms of what's going
on in the physical theatre world now, it's not that exciting. But the
sort of audiences who go and see it maybe haven't seen that sort of
irreverence before.”
In terms of
irreverence, then, Peepolykus are masters at it. As for their
original question of how you the complete works of Sherlock Holmes
on stage, the answer, of course, is elementary.
“If what happens in
our play is anything to go by,” says Nicholson, “it's a complete
disaster.”
The Arthur Conan Doyle
Appreciation Society, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, December 6th-22nd
Three Firsts From
Peepolykus
1996 - Let The Donkey
Go – The company's debut was an Edinburgh hit, where they defined
their style with an unlikely yarn about inept secret policeman
apprehending a suspect for being, well, a suspect. Since then, the
show has toured to eighteen countries.
2002 – Rhinoceros –
This is where Peepolykus showed off their absurdist roots to the fore
with a look at Eugene Ionesco's classic play set in a small French
town whose inhabitants are collectively struck down with
Rhinoceritus. It was also the first time the company used text in
their work.
2007 – The Hound of
The Baskervilles – The first Peepolykus reinvention of Arthur Conan
Doyle's back catalogue was also the first time they worked with
Traverse director Orla O'Loughlin. The production sold out West
Yorkshire Playhouse before transferring to the West End.
The Herald, December 4th 2012
ends
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