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Sherlock's Last Case
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Director |
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David Rose |
CHARACTERS
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Sherlock Holmes |
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Time Winters |
Sherlock and the Good Doctor
In December of 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle murdered Sherlock Holmes---
deliberately, premeditatedly, and in cold blood. That was the month
that The Strand magazine published the Holmes-Watson adventure entitled
The Final Problem, the story that had Holmes and his nemesis the evil
genius Professor Moriarity plunging together in a death struggle over
Switzerland's Reichenbach Falls. In a diary entry just after he
completed the tale, he wrote, with brutal simplicity: "Killed Holmes."
The world reacted with horror and shock. Thousands wore black armbands
or veils, and Conan Doyle received letters of protest and sorrow from
around the world begging him to return Holmes to life. He resisted for
close to a decade, until The Hound of the Baskervilles was serialized
beginning in 1901. This story did not bring Holmes back from his Alpine
tomb---it was merely a flashback to a time earlier in his career. Then
in 1903, Dr. Watson told jubilant readers that Sherlock Holmes was back
among the living in The Adventure of the Empty House. It seems the
great detective had escaped the fall and had hidden out for several
years, but he was back, as penetratingly perceptive and devastatingly
logical as ever.
The Sherlock Holmes adventures are likely the most imitated in all of
literature, and they are still being studied, annotated and discussed
across the globe. They have spawned countless pastiches and parodies,
and it is certain that the list would number well over 4,000. Most of
the Conan Doyle stories are narrated by his loyal companion and
faithful biographer John Watson, a man described as "a middle-sized,
strongly built man---square jaw, thick neck, a moustache." He has
suffered mightily at the hands of some scholars, corpulent character
actors, and the public since he made his appearance in 1887 in A Study
in Scarlet. In the collected stories he was both storyteller, brave aide-de-camp,
and buffer between the cold, blinding light of Holmes's intellect and
the reader. The stories without Watson, or in which he plays a minor
role, are generally thought to be more arid and lacking in humanity
when Holmes's shameless narcissism goes unchecked.
Literature never produced a relationship more symbiotic, nor a warmer
and more timeless friendship. The Sherlock Holmes-Dr. Watson
partnership has become perhaps the most recognizably iconic in all of
fiction. It is our collective knowledge and preconceptions of this
relationship that is the springboard for Sherlock's Last Case.
-David Rose
Derek Bjornsen, A Noise Within, Bardwell's on the Boulevard,
Brad Brown, Abbie Bundy, Andrew Campbell, The City of Burbank, The
Colony Board of Trustees, Brooks Gardner, Sarah Hartmann, Mark
Henderson, Demetrio James - Emergent Entertainment, Chuck Olsen - UCLA,
Salvador Palacios, Patterson Graphics, Pomodoro Cucina, Rich Roche,
Bill Shaw - San Gabriel Civic Auditorium, Southwest Airlines, Wadler
Data Systems, Lee Wochner - CounterIntuity
See our Bonus Materials
