Classical Theatre Company spares its audience the usual Sherlock Holmes clichés in its reboot of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band: An Adventure of Sherlock Holmes. (There’s no “Elementary, my dear Watson,” for example.) Doyle’s original short story, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, centers on Helen Stoner and her quarrelsome stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott. Helen’s twin sister died mysteriously on the eve of her wedding, so as Helen’s own wedding quickly approaches, she reaches out to Holmes to protect her from the same fate.
This isn’t the original short story or the 1910 play adaptation by Doyle himself — it’s a new adaptation by Timothy N. Evers. It modernizes the tale and re-instates some of the features of the short story that Doyle left out of the stage adaptation.
CTC Executive Artistic Director John Johnston stars in the mystery. “This particular adaptation creates fuller characters than Doyle’s stories manage,” said Johnston. “There are moments of relationship between Watson and Holmes, as well as Roylott and his stepdaughter Helen, that are, quite frankly, more interesting than the characters that Doyle wrote.”
Troy Scheid, longtime veteran of the CTC, directs this production. She agrees that Evers’s character development is a huge asset to the story. “Evers’s adaptation has streamlined [the plot] and put the focus on the characters and their conflicting desires. Notably, he retained the most important and interesting change from the short story: the development of the character of Dr. Roylott, a violent and unpredictable domestic tyrant,” Scheid said. Don’t be too concerned, though — the show will still have the same late-19th-century-London feeling, no doubt with plenty of gloom to spare. “While we retain the original setting of the piece, we want to put together a piece that is raw, immediate and pretty scary, within a world where Holmes and Watson can be relied on to find a solution,” Scheid said.
8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and February 9; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through February 22. 4617 Montrose. For information, call 713‑963‑9665 or visit classicaltheatre.org. $20.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m.; Mon., Feb. 9, 8 p.m. Starts: Feb. 5. Continues through Feb. 22, 2015
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2015.