Jon Jory's version of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes masterpiece, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is currently playing to full houses at Prattville's Way Off Broadway Theatre.
True to Conan Doyle's short story's conventions -- mysterious deaths, an isolated manor house, strange characters, many red-herrings and misdirections -- Jory's adaptation sustains the tension through a series of short scenes that require audiences to follow all the details as they try to identify the culprits before master sleuth Holmes [Kevin Morton] and his assistant Dr. Watson [Savannah Brown] resolve everything to our satisfaction.
There's a centuries-long history of mysterious deaths related to a curse on the Baskerville family that are attributed to a fearful phantom hound, the most recent one at Baskerville Hall that urges Dr. Mortimer [Russ Tipton] to engage Holmes and Watson to figure it out and protect the new owner Sir Henry Baskerville [Nate Greenawalt] from a similar fate.
Whether any of the characters are reliable witnesses is hard to tell, as details conflict with reports from the butler Barrymore [John Hill] and his wife [Sandra Hill], and from neighbor Stapleton [Luke Fenn] and his sister Beryl [Haley Falcione] -- not all is what it seems, and is complicated by the introduction of the mysterious Mrs. Lyons [Meagan Tuck]. -- Doubling as a Cabman and as Mr. Frankland, Jon Darby adds some freshness and details to the goings-on, and does so with confident appeal.
Much of the enjoyment for audiences comes from trying to stay one step ahead of the plot and character development, so no spoilers here. -- Suffice it to say that director Tara Fenn's troupe keep us in suspense from start to finish, and allowing us to change our collective minds as new evidence is divulged.
It isn't a long play [though long blackouts during scene changes added several minutes to the playing time], and could have sustained the atmosphere and dramatic tension by performing it without an intermission. That notwithstanding, The Hound of the Baskervilles remains one of Conan Doyle's best, and appeals to audiences today as it did when first penned in 1901.
