It’s probably not the last time we’ll ever see actor Todd Waite on an Alley Theatre stage but it will be his final appearance as a company member when Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery opens in a few days.
Once again playing Sherlock Holmes — a role he seems born to inhabit — Waite says this is a comfortable spot for him that has as much to do with the chance to repeatedly play the same character in any play. “There’s a great gift in just being so relaxed on stage.”
As written by Ken Ludwig, this isn’t a straightforward adaptation of what most readers consider the best Sherlock Holmes mystery written by Sir Arthur Collin Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles. In this mix of suspense and humor three of the actors will be changing at a moment’s notice from one character to another.
“In Baskerville there are these deaths, some in the past, some recent and they are attributed to this mystery, this unknown danger lurking of possibly a hound or the myth of the hound. But there’s enough ambiguity that the suspense hangs in the air of the unknown,” Waite says. To make matters even more complicated, Sherlock devises a strategy that he and Watson (Christopher Salazar) will work independently trying to solve the mystery. “So there’s two tracks of investigation going on and it collides together at the end,” Waite says.
“It is a murder mystery but it’s also done in the context of this very playful style where Brandon Hearnsberger, Elizabeth Bunch and Dylan Godwin play many, many, many different characters. And the Alley being the Alley, huge massive costume changes beautifully rendered by Sarah [Cubbage] the designer.” Eleanor Holdridge (Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me A Soprano, Jane Eyre) directs.
“Watson and my job is to play it as seriously with as much tension as the other Sherlock Holmes stories. While the other actors create this mayhem and there’s a kind of playful acting tension between the characters trying to do it seriously and the other characters racing madly around. And sometimes maybe going too far, he says, laughing.
In terms of Sherlock specifically, Waite says, “I’ve always thought Sherlock was a bit if not a lot like Hamlet where there’s this great mind driving this deep pool of need and life force. But the surgical knife edge of his being is the mind. It lets me use both sides of me.”
Initially he says, he thought as a young student he was going to go into the sciences. “So it lets me enjoy that part of me while his subterranean needs and wants are still there, the kind of juicy part of acting. He’s a coiled spring of kind of muscular availability but it’s all contained within this mind and that’s exciting to play.”
The audience demand to see another Sherlock Holmes play and specifically one with Waite in the lead role is so intense that the Alley has already added eight performances.
Waite believes the enduring interest in Sherlock Holmes is not just the consulting detective himself but the combination with Dr. Watson.
“Sherlock is not lovable except that he is admired, loved admired by Watson who stays loyal to him. I think we admire virtuosity and we are thrilled by a physical and mental vibrancy in Sherlock. Although he is tempted by the dark side of life. He is tempted by heroin, cocaine, opium addict although that does not play in this version. He is easily bored with life. He needs almost like a drug this mental challenge of difficult cases.
“But because Watson loves him and worries about his health and cares for him, we kind of love him in the reflected emotion that Watson shows. It’s really about friendship at the heart of it. It’s about two different people who manage a kind of life together that is worthwhile,” Waite says. “Complicated, imperfect, not always lovable characters still fighting to do the right thing, touch our hearts. I think most people would like to think of themselves as good. Though most of us couldn’t keep up with Sherlock, most of us like to consider ourselves smart too.”
“This is a good one to go out on with Sherlock. The Sherlock genre in general has been a serious melodrama. This is clearly a goof on that and I’m glad about that because I wouldn’t want to have my last play as a permanent company member take myself too seriously in that role. It’s a great role. I’ve loved it so much but I want to kind of have fun with it,” Waite says.
“This isn’t a bittersweet departure at all. it’s not that I’m retiring forever. I look forward to staying connected to the Alley in a more general sense. It was just time at 65 and sort of having accomplished a lot of what I wanted to accomplish, to just let myself take it a little easier. And that’s purely it. My body wanted to do two or three plays a year and not six. So I look very forward to continuing to work. This is not my retirement from acting but from the permanent full time company.”
Performances are scheduled for April 4 through May 4 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $29-$110.
