Hound of the Baskervilles (tour)

If video projection isn’t the way forward then two productions have got it very wrong this week; Lloyd Webber’s Woman in White and the Nottingham Playhouse’s co-production with the Salisbury Playhouse, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Having seen the latter, I can say whole-heartedly that if it is, we’re in for some exciting productions to come.

While Ken Harrison‘s set does everything expected of it, Timothy Bird‘s film, animation and motion graphics take this production into a class of its own. Together with Nick Richings lighting and Matthew Bugg‘s sound design they create a genuinely eerie mood – alas for most of time strangely at odds with the pantomimic feel of Clive Francis‘ adaptation.

Audience expectations of an evening of gothic horror enlivened by a slavering hound and a chilling denouement are in for a disappointment. This production plays homage to The Woman In Black but it’s true spiritual home is in Travels With My Aunt (in which Francis previously starred), for it takes the same gimmick of four actors playing every role, even the same character concurrently.

With a complicated and – dare I say – very old fashioned story, this production lacks the solid lead the audience needs to carry them through the twists of the plot, though Granville Saxton is a pleasing Holmes. The device of having three actors as Dr Watson often confuses, meaning it helps to have a working knowledge of what is – arguably – one of the world’s best-known detective story before you take your seat.

If director Richard Baron fails to capture the tension of the original story, gasps of amazement are summoned up by the technical trickery – in particular the scene in the billiards room of Baskerville Hall where at a mimed table the cues click and balls kiss in perfect timing to the action on stage.

Despite its misgivings, this is something of an audience pleaser. The performances are strong, the laughs genuine and the admiration for the technical skills of the crew well-founded. But you can’t help but think what it could have been if only the horror of the original was truly imagined.

– Jake Brunger (reviewed at the Nottingham Playhouse)