Review Roundup: SHERLOCK HOLMES with David Arquette

Broadway In Chicago and producers Starvox Entertainment and June Entertainment present SHERLOCK HOLMES, starring David Arquette in the title role. JAMES MASLOW, the actor and singer perhaps best known for playing the role of James Diamond in Nickelodeon's "Big Time Rush" and a member of the band with the same name, stars as the legendary Dr.John Watson, along with RENNE OLSTEAD, best known for her role as Lauren Miller in the TV sitcom "Still Standing," and as Madison Cooperstein in "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," as the well-to-do-American, Lady Irene St. John. This new and original adaptation inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tales by playwright Greg Kramer and directed by Andrew Shaver is scheduled to play Chicago's Oriental Theatre (24 W Randolph) November 24 - 29, 2015.

The eleven member acting company includes much of the original cast from the original, critically-acclaimed Montreal Segal Centre production that premiered in May 2013, also directed by Andrew Shaver, who will restage the show for a North American tour, launching a six-performance, "Tour Preview" engagement on October 15, 2015 in Los Angeles, followed by longer runs in Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Chicago, with subsequent cities planned into 2016 and to be announced shortly.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: At the end of the new touring production of "Sherlock Holmes," at the Oriental Theatre for Thanksgiving week, that great breathy saxophone solo from the late Gerry Rafferty's 1978 hit "Baker Street" emerges from the loudspeakers - ra da da da d-a-a-arrr! This is, by far, the highlight of the night. First and foremost, it signals that the show is now over. Actually, honorable reportage requires me to note that the show was over at intermission Tuesday night for a good portion of those in seats near mine, some savvy Chicagoans apparently having decided that trussing a turkey was preferable to sitting passively in the face of so foul a bird.

Adam Fendelman, Hollywood Chicago: My face stayed disappointingly deadpan, my voice mostly monotone and my head kept being confused - unable to answer why this live show would devolve into this campy retreat. The opening-night Chicago audience was relatively quiet, too. The show only earned interspersed chuckles rather than laugh-out-loud bellows, intermission couldn't come soon enough and the curtain call came and went with the sold-out crowd ready to go home.

Glenn Sumi, Now Toronto: The two-and-a-half hour mess mashes together several of Doyle's famous tales, with the titles of them projected onto screens. These include stories about murders, disappearances, empty trunks, opium dens and cavernous mansions. None of the narratives is carried out with anything resembling logic. Matters aren't helped by director Andrew Shaver's attempt to distract us with various styles. One minute he's recreating a shaky black and white film, the next he's riffing on a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and the next he's letting two actors channel their inner Tweedledee and Tweedledums as Victorian era clerks.

Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star: With all due respect, Kramer's script is a strange mixture of smarty-pants humour and straight-ahead Holmesian plotting that never really clicks. It also keeps falling into an annoying hipster tone that keeps you from becoming engaged with the proceedings. But the bigger mystery is why anyone hired David Arquette and James Maslow to play Holmes and Watson. Maslow is simply wrong for the role: too young, too American, too contemporary in feel.

Jeff Cottrill, Digital Journal: Holmes purists, and even audience members with only basic familiarity with the Holmes universe, will be disappointed on some level. There's little here that resembles the original Doyle spirit, despite a few obligatory nods in the direction of tradition (Holmes discovering his famous hat, his penchant for disguise, etc.). If all you want from Sherlock Holmes is a masterpiece of production design and technical craft, the show delivers. But as an adaptation of the Holmes legend, it's a little too elementary, my dear.

Photo Credit: Brian To

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