By Mike Renzella
The Haldimand Press
PORT DOVER—It’s been a big year for Lighthouse Festival, which operates both the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover and the Roselawn Theatre in Port Colborne. Returning to live indoor theatre for the first time in two years and following a season of lighthearted comedies, the team at Lighthouse has unleashed their most ambitious show of the season, The Real Sherlock Holmes.
The show, written by Canadian playwright Peter Colley and developed through Lighthouse’s Play Development Program, is making its world premiere on the Lighthouse stage. It tells the story of a young Arthur Conan Doyle as he travels through the underbelly of Edinburgh and across the Scottish countryside to track down a killer with the aid of one of his medical school professors, Dr. Joseph Bell. It will reveal the secret origin story of how Doyle came up with his famous character, Sherlock Holmes.
Colley shared his inspiration behind the story: “I’ve always loved Sherlock Holmes, being a Basil Rathbone fan since I was quite young. But also, as a writer of mysteries myself, I have been fascinated by the creative process and how the origins of Sherlock came about. Especially as Arthur Conan Doyle was so different in so many ways to the character he created. Arthur Conan Doyle believed in mysticism and the occult, something that his ultra-logical Sherlock would have utterly despised.”
He continued, “I scoured the internet for information on Dr. Bell, and he turned out to be a fascinating character. He was a doctor who believed in using intense observation and logic in the diagnosis of his patients to discover what diseases or ailments they may have. It was this keen interest in observation that Arthur Conan Doyle noticed and took to heart.”
He said that Lighthouse’s in-house development process was “vital” to the process of putting the show together: “It all began as an idea in my head, and may have gone nowhere until I mentioned it to (Lighthouse Artistic Director) Derek Ritschel when we were having coffee one day in Port Dover. Derek’s interest in the story, especially its comic possibilities, encouraged me to do the hard work and research that ended in the play that is on the Lighthouse stage right now. Derek was indispensable to this process as he guided and encouraged me all along the way, being a supportive creative partner in the development and honing of the story and balancing the comedy and drama.”
Ritschel said the large scale of the production both thrilled and unnerved him at the same time. He explained, “We don’t do a lot of period pieces; there’s the fun of costumes, and music, and the ambience of the set. A lot of theatre we do is sort of contemporary, it’s a living room or a kitchen – this is a much bigger show.”
He described the backstage work done on the show as “intense,” with 30 different characters played by just seven actors. The play also features multiple locations, requiring a nimbly-designed set, able to change quickly from a professor’s study to a castle rampart, to Scotland’s underbelly: “Each one of those scenes has props and a distinct look. That magnifies what the set designer and the props team have to do.”
actors Allan Cooke, Jeff Dingle, and David Rosser put on their scared faces as the three traverse some dangerous waters.
Colley and Ritschel previously collaborated together on the popular show The Ghost Island Light: “Peter is a writer whose niche is the mystery thriller. There’s not many playwrights that do that, especially Canadian writers.”
When asked why, Ritschel replied, “They’re hard, man! It’s much easier to create a sense of darkness and foreboding on film. On stage, it can almost be hokey. It’s very hard to get a whole audience a bit unnerved. It’s very hard. A lot of people just stay away from it. Peter seems to have a knack for setting and characters that create that feeling of isolation and dread.”
Colley summed up his hopes for the show, saying, “I want the audience to be intrigued by the mysterious circumstances that we present on stage, and hopefully have some fun while trying to figure out exactly who done it. Of course, one doesn’t want them to figure it out too easily, but I do want them to understand at the end that there were clues along the way, and that a careful observer could have unearthed them…. I also want the audience to join in a sense of a great adventure, have lots of laughs at the quirky characters, and leave the theatre having a greater understanding of the two men, one of whom became a literary giant and the other his inspiration.”
You can catch The Real Sherlock Holmes in Port Dover until September 3 and then at Port Colborne’s Roselawn Theatre from September 7-18.
