Nov. 27--At the end of the new touring production of "Sherlock Holmes," at the Oriental Theatre for Thanksgiving week, that great breathy saxophone solo from the late Gerry Rafferty's 1978 hit "Baker Street" emerges from the loudspeakers -- ra da da da d-a-a-arrr! This is, by far, the highlight of the night.
First and foremost, it signals that the show is now over.
Actually, honorable reportage requires me to note that the show was over at intermission Tuesday night for a good portion of those in seats near mine, some savvy Chicagoans apparently having decided that trussing a turkey was preferable to sitting passively in the face of so foul a bird.
Still, the exit music meant no more of David Arquette racing through an ersatz, steampunk London town and delivering dialogue so anachronistic it felt more like Doctor Who, although that comparison would greatly tarnish the good doctor.
It meant no more of the 25-year-old version of Dr. Watson created by James Maslow, whose English accent meanders from City of London banker to East End dock worker (often within the same line), and whose natty chapeau and hipster style puts one in mind not so much of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famously dull and reliable second banana but a youthful version of the nightlife entrepreneur Billy Dec.
And it signaled the end of Renee Olstead's absurdly goth Lady Irene St. John, although the requisite pronunciation of her name tied so many of her fellow cast members in cotton-mouthed knots that one was temporarily lifted from one's lethargy. We had "Lady Singed," "Lady Sin Jim" "Lady Sloe Gin" and heaven knows what other nefarious permutations.
There is something especially delicious about how Rafferty's song has, of course, nothing whatsoever to do with Sherlock Holmes, even though the 1970s songwriter could have been reviewing the experience of coming downtown for this thing in a busy, high-stakes week for Chicago families: "This city desert makes you feel so cold / It's got so many people but it's got no soul / And it's taken you so long to find out you were wrong / When you thought it held everything."
This thing holds nothing, folks, beyond offering a cautionary tale of not trusting the material. And the show most certainly has no soul -- I'd have settled for something approaching a human pulse. Greg Kramer's script (which, remarkably, was well regarded when it premiered in Montreal) is a self-aware mashup of several faux-Holmesian mysteries involving a stiff by the side of the river, a trip to an opium den, Professor James Moriarty and so on -- all of which unspool at once in what is clearly intended to be a stakes-raising gambit that gets our pal Sherlock out of 221B and rushing across London, realized, music-video style, by the designer James Lavoie.
I'm all for using the public domain to the fullest extent of its freedoms and for having some fun with a character who was always intended as entertainment. I'm all for celebrities on the road. I have no problem with updates. And I'd also be interested to see this script in a completely different production.
But this show is a total disaster -- first and foremost because it fails to tell its story with clarity and honesty and it offers so little of what has made literature's most arrogant detective such fun for so many generations. It wants so badly to be cool, it ends up being nothing at all.
If you can follow what is transpiring in this particular bit of plotting, you will be doing better than I (and I like to think of myself as something of a Baker Street irregular). The self-appointed rules of this show are incredibly loose -- Arquette camps it up with total abandon in several spots. So if you assert that kind of meta-dramatic freedom, you might as well include the audience in the joke. Not here -- this is one chilly night out, folks, in the company of more miscast performers than you are likely to have ever seen assembled in one locale.
Arquette is a real actor, but this is not his role and you feel like he knows it all too well. Maslow (of "Big Time Rush" fame) was an absurd choice for Watson, having none of the attributes Conan Doyle applied to his guy. And Olstead seems to have no discernible sense of character whatsoever; she's in a bit of a daze. "Stuck in the Middle," as Rafferty wrote.
The level of misdirection does not end with the casting -- nothing is allowed to breathe nor gel here for so much as a second, and there are many seconds in 2 1/2 hours of restless, insecure, overextended claptrap.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
REVIEW: "Sherlock Holmes" -- 1 star
When: Through Nov. 29
Where: Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $21-$87 at 800-775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com
