The Adventure of the Crying Boy and The Adventure of the Creeping Man
I saw this first time round at OPEN Ealing and thorougly enjoyed it. The performance starts with a reading of Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Creeping Man and then moves on to Wally Sewell’s specially written drama, The Adventure of the Crying Boy, exploring the relationship between Holmes and Watson. (I still love watching the TV repeats of Jeremy Brett playing Sherlock Holmes. He perfectly captured the edginess of Holmes.) Anyway, well worth £5 in my view.
The Adventure of the Crying Boy by Wally Sewell in ‘Evenings and afternoons of Sherlock Holmes’ performed by Peter Saracen and Edmund Dehn, directed by Anthony Shrubsall.
It’s on at OPEN Ealing on Thursday 8th, Friday 9th, Saturday 10th and then Thursday 15th and Friday 16th August at 7.30pm. Matinees on Saturday 10th at 3pm and Friday 16th at 1pm.
Price: £5.00
Wally Sewell says, “As a writer I’ve always been interested in the mythical and the symbolic, and the concept of the unconscious, with its population of monsters swimming in its dark depths has been a constant draw. Representations of it, usually in the form of forests and wild places, are something of a recurring motif in my writing! My first exposure to Sherlock Holmes was having the Hound of the Baskervilles read to me as a school boy. At that stage what caught my imagination more than Holmes’spowers of deduction, was Conan Doyle’s evocation of the moors, haunted by malign spirits and bogs that could swallow up ponies, all observable from the relative civility of Baskerville Hall. I’ve tried to catch something of that spirit in my play.”
His play concerns an impromptu late night meeting between Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, who is now married and largely absent from Holmes’s life. As their conversation progresses, touching on Holmes’s cocaine addiction, his dalliance with Freud and confessions from childhood, demons pull themselves up through the cracks in the floorboards and out onto the stage.
The play has been well received at its various performances around the fringe, winning praise from members of the Sherlock Holmes Society and at least one professional psychiatrist!
Performed here with a reading of the short story The Adventure of the Creeping Man, the show promises to be an intriguing and engaging evening or afternoon’s entertainment.
NB Not suitable for children.
More details about this and other OPEN Ealing events here.