Ms. Watson is an American divorcee who’s coming to London for the first time. According to Hannah Meade who is directing Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt 2B: “She’s kind of lost. She’s seeking out some new beginnings.
“Ms. Watson finds Ms. Holmes’ apartment is open for a roommate and she applies to be her roommate. They meet each other for the first time and then very quickly, murder mystery begins.”
The apartment, of course, is at 221 Baker Street, Apartment B which as anyone who’s a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective creation Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Dr. John Watson will recognize this historic landmark, albeit a fictional one.
Playwright Kate Hamill takes this classic scaffolding andbuilds on it to create a darkly comic farce, with some updating. Beyond the gender switch, the two main characters are emerging from the pandemic in “2021ish.”
Hamill, whose adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice have been performed on Houston stages most recently, is one of the most produced playwrights in America and is known for introducing a feminine viewpoint in her work.
Meade was the assistant director for Stages on NSFW in 2019 and Roe v. Wade in 2023. Although she didn’t grow up reading abotut Sherlock Holmes, she felt Hamill’s script makes the storyline completely accessible to anyone.
“I would say it’s a farcical story that has a surprising element of heart to it. It’s full of hijinks. It’s very action packed as well. I would say audiences can expect to laugh and kind of tossed an turned through this wild journey that we’re taken on,” she says.
Rose Morrigan plays Sherlock Holmes, Heather Hall is Dr. Joan Watson, Mai Lê is Irene Adler/ Mrs. Hudson/ Mrs. Drebber and Christopher Szeto-Joe as Moriarty/Lestrade/Elliot Monk.
The two leads, besides working to solve mysteries, want to solve the mysteries of each other, Meade says.. “They are trying to solve each other. They both have these mysteries — if they can even get along or becomes friends.”
Working at Stages is something of a homecoming for her, Meade says. “I grew up in Houston and went to Sam Houston State University and graduated in December 2018 and Stages was my first assistant directing job. Then I moved away and I got to come back and do Roe.” The former Stages Artistic Director Kenn McLaughlin was one of her college professors at SHSU and gave her the Holmes and Watson assignment before he left Stages.
Meade, who is now based in San Diego, was associate director on Hamill’s The Little Fellow when it premiered in San Diego a year ago, so a chance to work with the playwright again was another reason Meade wanted to direct Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson -Apt 2B, she says.
“There are many director challenges as in how to make certain things work. We go to many different places and this is performed in the round. So even traveling to other worlds is always a fun challenge. But then there’s like special effects challenges, elements that kind of come out of nowhere and have been a really, really fun challenge to try and solve in the room. And I think the solutions are going quite well.”
Addressing the challenge of working in the round, Meade says they are adopting really dynamic staging, moving a lot. Making sure that even if [audience members] are not experiencing a face, they’re experiencing the story still.
It probably helps that Meade grew up as a dancer. In high school she says she really didn’t like theater but found her way into the class. Her theater teacher told her she had to become involved in an afterschool activity and suggested she become a dance tutor for the other students in the musical they were performing. She ended up being the choreographer and went on to get a degree in theater, with an emphasis in choreography and directing.
“It made me fall head over heels with theater. I didn’t enter the process as an actor. I always had this choreographer and director brain. Think that shaped my process in a little bit of a different way. Talking about how bodies move in space in the round, I think I approach it a bit more as a dancer than an actor.”
Asked why people should come see this play, Meade says:
“I think it’s really exciting to tell classic stories in new ways. As humans we’re like really attached to the old ways we like to do things. Getting to sit in a theater and watch a brand new way that we tell an old story, I think it opens people’s minds. This thing that I grew up with, that I saw in a very specific way, is now through a new lens. And I’m okay with that. It keeps the same essence of the story in a new way without losing any of the love that I previously had for it.”
Performances are scheduled for October 25 through November 17 at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday’s through Fridays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at Stages The Gordy Theatre, 800 Rosine. For more information, call 713-5270123 or visit stageshouston.com. $66-$89.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
