✭✭✩✩✩

by Reginald Candy, directed by Craig Hall

Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

August 15-October 13, 2024

Holmes: “The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime” (“The Final Problem”, 1893)

The triumvirate of Damien Atkins, Ric Reid and Claire Jullien has proved to be unmatchable as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson. If anyone decided to refilm The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, they simply have to choose these three and they will have the core for a great series. Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Human Heart, now having its world premiere at the Shaw Festival, is the third outing for the three in a Holmes play. They first appeared together in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 2018. Then in 2021 they appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Raven’s Curse. What is so depressing is that with the best-cast actors one could hope for for these legendary figures, the Festival has been unable to find a worthy script. Human Heart is by far the worst of the three Holmes outings. Its plot makes no sense and its entire second act is pointless.

Human Heart has supposedly been written by an Australian playwright named “Reginald Candy”. Since there no information about him or his plays anywhere on the internet, except for the bio in the Shaw programme, we will have to assume he is a fiction. (What actor would list Voltimand in Hamlet, a tiny part almost always cut, as one of his credits?) If the author is hiding their identity, that is just as well since Human Heart is one of the most ill-conceived plays ever to appear on the Festival stage.

The programme claims that the play is “based on characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”. But that is not the whole truth. The play’s structure shows that it really should be labelled as an adaptation of Doyle’s short story “The Final Problem” published in The Memoires of Sherlock Holmes (1893). This is the story that introduces Holmes’s arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty and the story where both Holmes and Moriarty die in a fall at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Like the short story, the play begins and ends with Watson’s eulogy of Holmes, it shows the scene where Holmes reveals the existence of Moriarty to Watson, it shows Holmes meeting Watson in Switzerland and it shows Watson being called away from Holmes by a Swiss message boy to attend a sick woman. In the story Holmes escapes near death three times in close succession. In the play this experience is transferred, rather unbelievably, to Mrs. Hudson.

In the short story, Moriarty, whom Holmes calls the “Napoleon of crime”, realizes that Holmes has uncovered him and he plans to flee to Europe. “Candy”, however, has decided this is not good enough and has added a series of crimes committed by Moriarty with no other purpose but to taunt the detective. In this gruesome plot human hearts, with no sign of the bodies they came from, begin appearing in various locations in London. Inspector Lestrade calls in Holmes and Watson.

In Act 2 of Human Heart “Candy” treats us to a very long scene in which Holmes, Watson and Lestrade visit a coroner to find out more about the hearts of the first five victims. By examining the hearts, the coroner, Holmes and Watson, with the help of Lestrade’s precocious sister, determine not only what kind of person owned each heart but also his name. The scene is ludicrous for many reasons. First, as Holmes later realizes, it is not the identity of the hearts’ owners that is important but where they were found– something he knew long before the visit to the coroner. Second, since I saw the play in the company of a surgeon, I learned what I suspected, that all the long discussion of each heart’s condition is complete rubbish. Thus, “Candy” subjects us to a tedious scene unnecessary to the plot and unedifying in any way.

In the second part of Act 2, Holmes decides to visit Moriarty, whom he is certain is behind all these killings. This visit makes no sense because Holmes has known where Moriarty lives ever since early in Act 1 and could have visited him at any time without allowing the count of humans hearts to mount to thirteen. In the short story it is Moriarty who visits Holmes, which makes much more sense. The dialogue by “Candy” is basically a verbatim transcription of the dialogue in the story wherein Moriarty points out all the similarities between himself and Holmes. In the play, Holmes flees Moriarty and soon we learn through a flurry of newsboys that it is Homes who is now accused of the murders. “Candy” gives us no clue as to how such a ridiculous turnabout could have occurred.

Act 3 takes us to Switzerland where Holmes meets up with Watson. We only learn about the events at Reichenbach Falls but do not see them. “Candy”, unfortunately, wants to put their own twist on the story. This twist, definitely not in Conan Doyle, makes absolute nonsense of everything that has gone before and suggests that Moriarty can be no “Napoleon of crime” but rather an ignoramus unworthy of Holmes’s attention.

Did no one at the Shaw Festival read the script of Human Heart before deciding to spend all the time and money required to put this drivel on stage? Director Craig Hall has no idea how to make the play work and seems to give up in Act 2 in which both the coroner’s scene and the confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty are completely static. The only action in the second of these is an inconclusive, very awkward fight scene that bursts out of nowhere.

What keeps the show watchable are the talents of Atkins, Reid, Jullien and Sanjay Talwar as Inspector Lestrade. Atkins is a brilliant but unusually vulnerable Holmes and far more sympathetic as a person than Holmeses often are. Reid is really an ideal Watson, who provides the qualities of generosity and humanity that Holmes seems to lack. Jullien is much more than Holmes’s housekeeper but rather a genial presence who links Holms to the everyday world. Talwar makes Lestrade, not into the bumbler as Lestrade has sometimes been portrayed, but a deeply concerned man who knows his own limits. The interaction of these four is a pleasure to watch in itself.

The other characters, most added by “Candy”, are ill-conceived or under-imagined. The worst example is Moriarty. This is supposed to be Holmes’s arch-nemesis who is really just like Holmes except someone who has gone over to the dark side. For unknown reasons, Hall seems to have left Johnathan Sousa to fend for himself. The Moriarty of Andrew Scott is the modern Sherlock series (2010-17) gave Moriarty an edge of madness. Eric Porter in the earlier Sherlock Holmes series (1984-94) makes Moriarty a passionless embodiment of evil. Sousa can’t match either one of these interpretations. Sousa’s conversation as Moriarty with Holmes is strangely pleasant without the undercurrent of menace one would expect.

“Candy” has decided that conventional Homes stories are too focussed on men and has so added a number of female figures not in Conan Doyle. The first is Lestrade’s sister Amelia, who wants to be a detective. As played by Rais Clarke-Mendes, Amelia is almost annoyingly intrusive and all the help her research provides turns out to be of no importance. “Candy” has given us a female coroner, Mrs. Allstrüd, who somehow learned her craft simply by watch her husband perform his duties. Nehassaiu deGannes makes the coroner intelligent, likeable and enthusiastic, but she can only do so much to make all the faux-medicalese “Candy” gives her sound less boring.

Since Moriarty is thought of as the Reverse-Holmes, “Candy” has given him an equivalent to Mrs. Hudson. Sophia Walker plays this servant as so decrepit and ineffective that it’s impossible to understand why Moriarty keeps her on.

Ken MacKenzie has designed fine-looking sets especially for Holmes’s study and for the mountain hotel in Switzerland. Yet, if Hall were more efficient he would ask for simpler set changes in Act 1 to give the action more momentum. Hanne Loosen has created handsome period costumes except for the garish plaid suit sported by Kelly Wong as Mr. Jabez Wilson.

The Sherlock Holmes series at the Shaw Festival has not gone from strength to strength – rather quite the reverse. There are so many plays featuring Holmes as a character, including plays written by Conan Doyle himself, one has to wonder why the Festival has chosen such poor adaptations. This latest “world premiere” by a bizarrely pseudonymous author is really the nadir. If the Festival wants to continue with more Sherlock Holmes, let’s hope it chooses its plays with greater care.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Ric Reid as Dr. Watson and Damien Atkins as Sherlock Holmes; Damien Atkins as Sherlock Holmes; Sanjay Talwar as Inspector Lestrade with ensemble; Sanjay Talwar as Inspector Lestrade, Rais Clarke-Mendes as Amelia, Nehassaiu deGannes as Mrs. Allstrüd, Ric Reid as Dr. Watson and Damien Atkins as Sherlock Holmes. © 2024 Emily Cooper. 

For tickets visit: www.shawfest.com.