‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is a bellyful of laughs

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

Those master performers of farce at Shakespeare & Company are at it again. I can only assume they know a good genre when they see it. Need we mention the company’s stellar productions of Tom Stoppard’s “Rough Crossing” and “The Real Inspector Hound,” George Feydeau’s “The Ladies Man,” and the Charles Ludlam spoof “The Mystery of Irma Vepp”? They were all staged with an exuberance that has more than tickled audience funny bones.

This time, it’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” a zany take-off on Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale spun around an adventure of the sleuth extraordinaire, Sherlock Holmes. The play was authored by Steve Canny and John Nicholson, and had its premiere at Shakespeare & Company in 2009.

It hardly matters that the script and the current production bear little resemblance to the original short story. Fidelity to literary sources is the last thing audiences will have on their mind in treating themselves to this spoof. The adaptation—outrageously derivative is its proper designation—is simply too funny to make you care one way or another.

The credit for the riotous confection goes directly to Director Tony Simotes. He displays a deft hand at creating delightful bits of situational humor and physical artifice that distinguished his work in this season’s marvelous “As You Like It.”

This time, the same three performers who starred in the 2009 production have joined hands to give audiences what the company excels at delivering. They are Jonathan Croy, Ryan Winkles, and Josh Aaron McCabe. The latter two actors tore up the scenery in episodic grandeur in “Irma Vepp,” just as they do in “Hound of the Baskervilles.” The two team up with Croy as the venerable (but usually addled) Dr. Watson.

Winkles and McCabe have the lion’s share of costume changes and switching characters—often hilariously. McCabe is wildly funny, whether as a sedate Holmes, a suspicious character bulleting across the stage on a crutch, a diminutive and bearded troll-like creature who seems barely three feet high, or a seductive Spanish temptress who wields two noisy fans to emphasize her dramatic, but scarcely consequential remarks.

Winkles likewise draws a hugely appreciative audience response as a cowering coachman whose frayed nerves are evident in the vibrating horsewhip he holds while being intimidated, as Sir Henry Baskerville being taken aback by the sudden disappearance of his trousers, or being framed in a devilish portrait of himself beaming with self-satisfaction.     

The humor in this show is pretty much divided between the dialogue and the situations characters find themselves embroiled in—or ditzy combinations of both.

In the character of Holmes, McCabe radiates the smugness of the famous sleuth. When queried by his sidekick what school it was in which all the students were found poisoned, you can see the answer coming from a mile away: “elementary, my dear Watson!”

“The Hound of the Baskervilles” runs through September 4 at Founders’ Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass. Performances are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinees 2 p.m. Tickets are $21.60-$48 and may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-637-3353 or online at www.shakespeare.org.