Two B or not Two B, that is not the question but the address of the Genesian Theatre Company – 2 B Gordon Street, Rozelle.
2B Gordon Street is currently transformed into 221B Baker Street as that iconic deerstalker capped sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, goes crème de la crème career criminal stalking in Ken Ludwig’s MORIARTY.
Watson first? No, Holmes on first as director and set designer Gregory George spotlights Conan Doyle’s detective in opium pipe sweet dream suspension. Is what eventuates over the next two hours a pipe dream? Is the house music prior to curtain up, Sweet Dreams by The Eurythmics, a clue, a hint, a segue?
Who’s on second? A little bit of silhouette, shadow and miniature marionette show, a bit of a novelty act.
Watson’s on second as nifty narrator to fill in the gaps and join the links as an investigation into the Bohemian King’s stolen letters suddenly cascades into an international mystery filled with spies, assassinations, blackmail, intrigue and puppets- shadow, stringed and Bunraku.
With world peace at stake, Holmes and Watson join forces with American femme fatale, Irene Adler, in a race against time to foil the schemes of the cunning puppet master Professor Moriarty and his string of string-less minions.
This production of MORIARTY is a case of guise and dolls as actors don disguise- wigs, beards, masks – or blacks to manipulate bland Bunraku effigies to create a myriad of characters whose metaphorical strings are pulled by Moriarty.
Joshua McGowan as Holmes sounds like he should be wearing an Akubra rather than a deerstalker but he’s not without a certain charm as the consummate deducer.
Jessica Joseph-McDermott as Irene Adler, supplies a saucy, sassy performance with the air of consummate seducer.
Peter David Allison as Watson exudes elementary and stolid support, while Peter Gizariotis as Moriarty gives us a vaudevillian villain, mordantly melodramatic, a Napoleon of crime ripe for his Waterloo.
Susan Jordan accesses an array of accents, a harmony from the British Isles as Mrs Hudson and Mrs Gasner to a Bohemian rhapsody as the homicidal Hilda Klebb (a close cousin to Rosa perhaps).
Dimitri Poulus is quite fine as Toby, the bloodhound, although how he resists that central design lamp post is mystifying, while Matthew Dell and Isla Harris flesh out a host of supporting characters.
Lighting and sound design by Michael Schell, costumes by Susan Carveth and the show concludes with the intro to Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street. Elementary.
