This smash hit comedy adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure, directed by Lotte Wakeham and adapted for the stage by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, will open to audiences from Thu 1 July – Sat 7 August.
“We are what we are, Watson. And... I love you, too.”
Or: The story of how @belladonnaxy and I unknowingly (!) went to a stage play that made Johnlock canon*
Yes, they did that.
(*And we totally took that picture before going in ... we been knew.)
More of my personal impressions after the cut (beyond the one, big fact that I obviously already spoilered), but:
Before that I’d like to present to you the great and almighty archive.org, where I found a recording of the play (x) done at BBC Radio Four’s More Than Words Festival in Bristol (2012).
So, please, enjoy – because there is so much gay subtext in this play, and the feeling of getting the pay-off for it at the very end is the best thing in the world.
Other than the radio play, the original production (and ours now) was only done by three male actors, and only the actor playing Watson was never really changing to play other people (and is therefore considered the “lead character” thehe). Both the actor who played Holmes, and the actor who played Sir Henry, were changing a lot, which led to some very funny pauses sometimes, where they played up the time it took to change into the other costume for laughs a lot.
There were... a lot of fourth wall breaks, in general. Which didn’t hurt me, like, at all :)
Do you like puns? Because there are a LOT of them in this play (and I mean a lot). Especially about dogs. But more so... about gay things.
You know, like...
Watson describing a walking stick as “a thin, length of wood with a curious curve at one end”.
Watson is Holmes’s conductor of light, “my(!) torch. Just... turn yourself on. And keep yourself turned on whenever you are around me.”
There are two posh guys getting off ... [long pause] ... the train.
Furthermore:
Watson is obsessed with food (and never gets to eat) – he especially would like a sausage.
When Watson is writing Holmes to report about what’s happening, he is pondering about how many kisses he should put next to his name when signing the letter (no joke).
Sir Henry constantly keeps pointing out the beauty of women to Watson, who simply shrugs it off each time and has like zero opinion about it.
Watson: “I just feel like... nothing compared to you.”
Holmes: “You are not nothing, Watson. You are my torch.”
Watson: “I love you, Sherlock.”
Holmes: “I know.”
(which, thank you @mollydobby, is possibly a Star Wars reference (x) :))
Holmes: “I need you, Watson.”
And, the famous last line of the play: “And, Watson: I love you, too.”
On a sidenote: There was a horse named Victor.
And before the interval, they raised all the open questions about who Cecilia Stapleton really is, “so, was it a girl or a dog?”
Yeah.
I’ve not listened to the full recording on the archive yet, so I don’t know how they would implement certain things, because this one is a radio and not a stage play – so, just to give you some visuals, too:
Watson and Holmes meet Sir Henry for the first time in a sauna in the London steam rooms, sitting there with him, Sir Henry’s crotch on eye-level (because Sir Henry is sitting on the upper bench), and Sir Henry casually completely unwraps his towel to readjust it, and stands there, flashing all his glory right into Watson’s face.
Leading to Watson blurting out, “We need to get out of here or I’ll explode.”
The first night at the Baskerville manor, it is so incredibly scary, with all the thunderstorms and hound-noises from the outside and whatnot – we see Sir Henry in his bed (which is standing upright on the stage, so we get the view from above), and he’s so frightened he yells out Watson’s name - who too, is frightened... so yes, in the end, they were bed-sharing. :)
Before the interval, one of the actors “fainted”, which was their perfect excuse to announce there shall be a little break.
After the interval, the Holmes actor came back on stage, holding up his phone like a drama queen and gesticulating to the Watson-actor, “READ IT!” - apparently, someone had tweeted during the interval, that while it was an enjoyable play, the guy who played Holmes was dragging out his lines like an asthmatic donkey, which is why the play felt really slow. So, making an “executive decision”, they would re-do the entirety of the first act now, but faster. Which. Was. The. Funniest. Thing. Ever. (And while skipping a lot of lines, naturally, they made really sure not to skip any of the gay subtext.)
When “Sir Henry” died by falling off the precipice after being chased by the hound, Watson tries to do CPR on the body, while Holmes stands there yelling it is useless, because “half his head is missing”. Watson ends up looking at Holmes like “try me bitch” and stubbornly keeps doing the CPR. Holmes, “What kind of a doctor are you even????”
Watson stands up, “FINE!”, and kicks the rag-doll that is the corpse across the entire stage. Repeatedly.
Holmes, suddenly yelling, “This is the worst thing that happened in my entire career!”, joins in the kicking the corpse around to relief his frustration.
Watson is being a bit bumbling and slow-witted in this one, so there is this one moment where he said something incredibly moronic, and Holmes just looks at him, sighs, is #done, #this is the idiot I married, #lies down on the floor and cries.
At one point, Sir Henry was shaving and Watson suddenly rushes him to go downstairs to meet up with Cecille Stapleton. But there is still all the shaving cream on his face, so Watson shall help clean Sir Henry up, quickly. The shaving cream is everywhere... on his face... in his mouth... in his eye :)))))
Watson and Holmes at one point disappear to play snooker together. You know. Aiming at the ball with a stick, trying to hole it, making way more rhythmic “aiming motions” with the stick than really necessary...
In general, there were a lot of sticks. And guns. And torch-guns.
Disclaimer (because I know this question will come up):
The entire play was a comedy, quite slap-stick, maybe a bit of Monthy Python-y humour – but yes, still, during the break we had our doubts whether all the “gay jokes” would end up being queerbaiting or not.
While we really thought they were genuinely funny jokes then already.
And they also dragged the straight cliché plotline of “he was a boy, she was a girl” through the mud a little with the whole Sir Henry / Cecille thing – going so far as including an entire tango dancing scene montage with disco balls and ridiculous music.
But in the end, both Sir Henry and Cecille AND Sherlock and John ended up saying “I love you” to each other in the second act, just to really drive it home what saying these words to another person actually means.
And it was glorious.
Second disclaimer:
This play told a story, and this story is over. And yes. There was gay subtext and there was pay-off for it at the end of this story.
So, please: Don’t salt about Moftiss on this post.
If you find this after series 5 has aired and they actually haven’t made it canon, then yes, go ahead and salt if you really have to. But not now. Not on this post.
Also, one more thing.
I’d like to point out the official listing of characters on the theatre’s website:
