“The Hound of the Baskervilles”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2011

I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sometimes size does matter and bigger is better. Tony Simotes’ 2009 staging of Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s hilarious three-man version of The Hound of the Baskervilles filled the intimate Bernstein Theatre with laughs, and now this new staging in the larger Founders’ Theatre is bigger and better in every way. Bigger jokes, bigger comedy, bigger laughs.

All my colleagues went and used their best canine puns in their reviews of Sylvia at the BTF. Sylvia is pleasant fun. The Hound of the Baskervilles is, literally, howlingly funny.

Key to the fun is the amazing, amazing, amazing (did I say AMAZING?) cast. Josh Aaron McCabe, Ryan Winkles, and Jonathan Croy are perfection, and on opening night half the fun was watching them crack each other up with ad libs and hilarious cover lines for the gaffs that inevitably crop up in a show this fast-paced. Everyone was having a ball, including the sadly uncredited stage crew. What, they get a curtain call and they don’t get their names in the program? Booo!

But that the only complaint I have about this one. It starts out funny and stays funny and you never want it to end. I could go back and see it a million times more and it would still have me helpless with laughter. As the kids say: ROFLMAO!!

The Hound of the Baskervilles was the fifth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and it was originally published serially in the Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902. This version was created by in 2007 by Peepolykus (pronounced people-like-us), the British equivalent of our Reduced Shakespeare Company, creators of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) with which Simotes had repeated success at Shakespeare & Company in 2000, 2001, and 2003, all three times with Croy in the cast. McCabe and Winkles are a joint discovery of Simotes’, who brought them with him to Shakespeare & Company in 2006 when he returned to direct The Merry Wives of Windsor. They work wonderfully well as a team and with Croy. I can only imagine how uber-hilarious those productions of “The Complete Works…” would have been with McCabe and Winkles along for the ride!

If you are a big Conan Doyle and/or Holmes fan, do not fear. This ridiculous romp sticks very closely to the plot of the original novella and derives its comedy from pushing Doyle already melodramatic style over the top, with the added fun of the lightning changes of set and costumes, and a pile of good old-fashioned dumb jokes. While there’s plenty of zany, ribald humor and Winkles manages to drop trou more times than seems humanly possible, none of it is crude or offensive. It is like a Looney Tune come to life. You can take grandma and the kiddies to this one and everyone will have a ball.

The great joy of this new staging is the amount of space available for the actors to run amok. McCabe in particular is a phenomenal physical comedian – watch him morph from the World’s Greatest Detective to a fiery Brazilian beauty to a peculiar little swamp dwarf to an astonishingly spry cripple. Winkles isn’t far behind him in skill, assaying the romantic hero, Sir Henry Baskerville, a rougeish Scotsman, and a carriage horse, among others. McCabe’s every entrance is dramatic, but none more so than when he is in drag as the Latina Cecile. His/her tango with Winkles in Act II is just one of many fast moving highlights.

Croy plays only the role of Dr. John Watson, but one can hardly call him the straight man of the bunch.

Simotes moves this show at break-neck speed, so it is over the top funny when they open Act II with a fast-forward replay of everything that happened in Act I. If you haven’t noticed the stage crew before, this is where they really come to the fore, along with Jim Youngeman’s rolling set pieces and Govane Lohbauer’s phenomenal and clever costumes.

Looking at Kevin Sprague’s performance photos is almost as much fun as watching the show, and if you have seen it, perusing this gallery will have you laughing all over again. I can’t run them all but I encourage you to go take a look.

Shakespeare & Company doesn’t need my help to sell tickets to this one, in fact I am sure they were doing a brisk business as soon as the was announced back in December. So call NOW if you want to see this show – and, trust me, you DO want to see this show.

When I was a teenager I had the great good fortune to see Peter Cook and Dudley Moore live on stage. The only thing that keeps this trio from being on a par with Cook and Moore is that they didn’t write their own material. Otherwise, they are comparable in every way. There are young people who will see this production and tell their grandchildren: “I had the great good fortune to see McCabe, Winkles, and Croy live on stage.”

The Hound of the Baskervilles runs from July 21 through September 4 in the Founders’ Theatre on the Shakespeare & Company campus on Kemble Street in Lenox MA. The show runs two hours with one intermission and is fun for all. Performances in the evenings run at 7:30 p.m. and in the afternoons at 2 p.m.

Tickets range from $15 to $85, and S&Co.’s usual range of discounting options are available, including discounts for groups, students, senior citizens, and the very popular 40% Berkshire Resident Discount. Contact the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or boxoffice@shakespeare.org, or order tickets from www.shakespeare.org. The Founders’ Theatre is air-conditioned, wheelchair accessible and hearing aid assisted.

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