BWW Reviews: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUICIDE CLUB Is A Cliffhanger

Jeffrey Hatcher is a prolific writer whose body of work has included playful homages to the fiction of such venerable literary figures as Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle, dotted with postscripts about the vulnerability of man-unkind. One such vehicle is Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, now on stage at Desert Foothills Theatre.

Hatcher's adaptation of the suicide club motif~ first introduced by Stevenson in his 1878 three-story cycle and later embodied in the pranksterish secret society of late 1970's San Francisco ~ places Doyle's Holmes and Watson in the sticky thicket of 1914 Europe. It's a clever fusion and makes for a mind-bending whodunit experience.

The ever-melancholy Holmes (Jeff Carpenter), in apparent despair and much to the alarm of Dr. Watson (Joe Simon), joins the Suicide Club whose idiosyncratic members adopt pseudonyms to hide their identities and commence upon a game of musical chairs that at one point is fatuously described as "a final journey akin to grace." The method, administered by the Club Secretary (Donna Georgette) and designed to "avoid the messy practicalities" of the act, involves "suicide by second parties," wherein each member picks a billiard ball from a hat, the color determining who shall be the victim and who shall do the deed.

Of course, nothing is as it seems, and Sherlock suspects that there may be skullduggery afoot among his fellow members. And, of course, he's quite right.

The fun of the play, directed by Amy Serafin, is in the twists and turns that engage and captivate the audience until the true culprit is unmasked and the conceit that has driven the crime is revealed. Notwithstanding some stumbles in staging and uncertain accents, the show is a mystery-lover's fine entertainment and a tribute to the inherent value of community theater.

It is also, in a moment of poignant Holmesian reflection, a reminder of our vulnerability to hybris. Political intrigue abounded in the early years of 20th Century Europe, each dalliance in diplomatic alignments and nefarious schemes for hegemony auguring the potential for catastrophe. Thus, as Holmes presciently acknowledges in the play's denouement, there are two kinds of suicide clubs, and the one most to be feared is that being acted out offstage by the Great Powers in the ominous days preceding the Great War. We know how that turned out, and a century later realize how little in the affairs of states has changed.

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club continues its run at Desert Foothills Theatre to March 29th.

Photo credit to Tiffany Bollock

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