Holmes, Hound and Huddersfield...

The cast of The Hound of the Baskervilles arrive to start rehearsals on Monday. This production kicks off the new season I am really looking forward to getting the show on its feet. When I first read the script I thought it was a brilliant adaptation by Clive Francis and knew straight away that this was something I wanted to stage – the theatricality of it was irresistible and the content true to the original novels.

The recent popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories on TV and in film makes our production fairly fashionable, the Holmes character is ripe for reinvention but at the base of it the Conan Doyle stories are simply fantastic mystery tales. Conan Doyle popularised crime fiction and detective stories, the recent success of novels such as the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy has prompted a boom for crime fiction in general and the Sherlock Holmes stories stand up against these new popular stories. These classic tales can be reimagined time and time again.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of many writers during the late 1800s – early 1900s producing timeless English literature. Other writers of that time include Wordsworth, Lewis Carol, Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, H G Wells and Joseph Conrad. All of these writers produced universal stories that have been adapted for TV and film many times.

This production has also developed our relationship with the design company imitating the dog who have a done a fantastic job of creating the eerie environment I envisioned when I read the script. The Hound of the Baskervilles - like all good plays - could be performed on a bare stage because the writing is so good but the projection techniques that imitating the dog will be using really enhance the suspense of the script and really develops the sense of danger in the story; the moors of Dartmoor, the fog, the enclosed community. All of these add a real claustrophobic feeling to the play.

The Hound of the Baskervilles will be a great introduction to the characters to anyone who doesn’t know the stories – although you be hard pressed not have either seen the film or TV series over the last year or so. The show opens at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield on 12 March and runs for a week before it goes on tour across the country. Remember you can book a seat on a coach through our box office to get form Oldham to Huddersfield.

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director