Watching a recording of a
live stream online theatre dramatisation of ‘The Hound of the
Baskervilles’ from Hardin County
Schools Performing Arts Center at the end of last month, and
having made a few checks, I realised that this represented the
fiftieth such dramatisation that I had experienced of Sherlock
Holmes’ most famous case. Despite having Holmes out of the action
for over half the story, it seems to be the ‘go-to tale’ when
intending to present a Sherlock Holmes adaptation. I have therefore
taken advantage of reaching the magic number of 50, to reflect on
these dramatisations by medium, in what I hope may become a regular
feature (covering the other three novels).
Radio/Audio
It is in the audio
medium that I intend to start. As I have mentioned in this blog
before, although it was theatre and TV that first got me into Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, it was the Radio 4 dramatisations of the stories
with Clive Merrison and
Michael Williams that cemented my Sherlockian passion. In fact
the Radio 4 series tackled HOUND twice, the first time starring Roger
Rees and Crawford Logan as a sort-of pilot, then as the final
canonical story of the series, now with the stars of the other 59
stories, Merrison & Williams. However, my first experience of
HOUND was a different audio version, a three-hour epic on two
cassettes from Collins/Caedmon
(the cassette cover image is above), starring Nicol Williamson and
George Rose as Holmes and Watson respectively. (Williamson had
previously played Holmes in the film ‘The
Seven Percent Solution’ eight years before the 1984 audio
production). The performances along with carefully chosen pieces of
classical music (I still can’t hear ‘Night on the Bare Mountain’
without thinking of a spectral hound) meant that my young mind was
hooked from the words ‘They were the footprints of a gigantic
hound’. The pictures certainly are better on the radio.
I must also mention the
Clive Nolan/Oliver Wakeman concept album (narrated by Robert Powell
as Watson), which is being re-released in April 2021 as part of a
boxset, ‘Tales
by Gaslight’, also containing their rock opera version of
‘Jabberwocky’ and tracks from an unreleased ‘Frankenstein’
album.
Many audio versions
have followed included the excellent ‘Big
Finish’ dramatisation with Nicholas Briggs and Richard Earl, a
version starring ‘Castle’ regular Seamus
Deaver, and even a version starring Sir
Derek Jacobi which manages to cram the entire story into 35½
minutes.
Films
There are two classic
film versions of HOUND, the Twentieth
Century Fox film in 1939 starring Nigel Rathbone and Nigel Bruce
(in the first of their appearances as the duo on film and radio) and
the Hammer film
twenty years later starring Peter Cushing and Andre Morrell. Both
play up the atmosphere of the moor, despite neither being filmed on
Dartmoor, as well as the love story between Sir Henry and a local
woman, and I find it hard to choose between them, but slightly prefer
the Hammer version for the inclusion of Christopher Lee as Sir Henry.
I have also struggled through three German dramatisations from 1914,
1929
and 1937, the first two being silent but with English surtitles
helping immensely. An animated
version of the story in 1983 starring the bored voice of Peter
O’Toole (he recorded dialogue for all four novels, seemingly in one
day from his lucklustre performance) should be overlooked by all but
completists.
However, even this is
not the worst film version – the Peter
Cook & Dudley Moore version in 1978 beats all comers. As I
will show in my discussion of theatre dramatisations below, HOUND is
a novel ripe for a humourous take, with some jokes being there
already in the original text – Sir Henry describing the Hound as
‘the pet story of the family’ being the prime example. However,
the film is simply not funny, the only slightly amusing parts being
taken wholesale from a ‘Julian
and Sandy’ sketch from ‘Round The Horne’ (Kenneth Williams
looking appropriately outraged by the theft) and the pair’s ‘One
Leg Too Few’ sketch in full when trying to hire a runner. Even
Spike Milligan in a brief cameo looks embarrassed to be in it.
Television
The earliest television
HOUND that I have seen in the 1968
BBC version, again starring Peter Cushing (this time with Nigel
Stock as Watson), one of the few episodes to remain from that series.
In fact the BBC have regularly returned to HOUND, with the 1982
version starring Tom Baker (just after he had left ‘Doctor
Who’) and adapted by ‘Doctor Who’ stalwart Terrance Dicks,
being my favourite (if a little slavish to the original text). The
other two BBC dramatisations were the 2002
version starring Richard Roxborough and Ian Hart, and the 2012
updated version starring Benedict
Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. In 1983 Ian
Richardson investigated the spectral hound (his ‘Sign of Four’
was much better due to a far superior Watson), in 1988 Jeremy
Brett and Edward Hardwicke gave us their version, and in 2000
Matt ‘Max Headroom’
Frewer appeared in a Canadian version. Further updated versions
were seen in ‘Sherlock
Holmes in the 22nd Century: The Hounds of Baskervilles’
and ‘Elementary:
Hounded’. I have also enjoyed an Italian
dramatisation from 1968, and a Russian one from 1981, starring
the excellent Vasily
Livanov and Vitaly Solomin.
However, again there is
a dramatisation letting the side down – the 1972
Universal TV movie, starring the far too old Stewart Granger as
Holmes (and Bernard Fox as Watson). The main problem can be seen in
the casting of William Shatner in the roles of both the villain of
the piece and his ancestor, the wicked Sir Hugo Baskerville with an
ineffective beard, meaning that as soon as he appeared in the
modern-day role it was clear who was behind it all. Shatner’s
acting style only adds to the problems. I see-saw between this and
the Cook/Moore film as my least favourite HOUND.
Theatre
Theatre performances
make up nearly 40% of the total. The first theatre version of HOUND
that I ever saw was a straight dramatisation in 2001, the Tim
Kelly version freely available to amateur dramatics groups.
However, all my memories in relation to it are of myself and a friend
struggling not to laugh as one of the characters poked fake flames in
a fire, causing the whole fireplace to wobble. It also changed the villain for no discernable reason. In the years since I
have seen multiple versions of HOUND that were intentionally funny,
so I intend to look at the theatre performances by type: straight
play, and comedy.
My second theatre HOUND
starred Peter Egan and Philip Franks (who I saw again a few years
later performing ‘The
Secret of Sherlock Holmes’). I remember the set resembled a
pile of books. Since then I have seen nine further straight
dramatisations (including another production of the Tim Kelly
version). My memories of some of these are very vague, but I remember
enjoying a live radio play version written by Simon Williams; a
production presented by Pollyanna
Training Theatre in 2015 in which all the parts were played by
children, with a female Holmes and Watson; and an open-air version
presented by Illyria in 2018
in the grounds of Lincoln Castle.
However, it is a
promenade production in 2019, presented by 09 Lives in a Victorian
graveyard at night that I have the clearest recollection of, in
particular when we reached ‘Baskerville Hall’. (Click here
for a full review). An audio version (no longer available) was
released during lockdown, and was an immediate purchase for me. This
production along with many of my favourite theatre versions managed
to keep the ‘Hound’ at a distance so as not to spoil the
carefully built atmosphere with a substandard dog (As I said in a
previous
post on this blog – “If doing 'The Hound of the
Baskervilles', and you can't produce a realistic glowing 'devil dog',
let its attacks always be off-stage”.)
Moving on to the
comedic versions (where a ‘rubbish Hound’ adds to the hilarity).
The first comic version that I ever saw was the incomparable
Peepolykus’ West End
residency at the Duchess Theatre (where years later I saw ‘The Play
That Goes Wrong’ – a worthy successor) in 2007. This has proved
to be a version impossible to beat in later years, with even a
production
with the same script and the extra cachet of being performed mere
yards from where the original novel was written at Undershaw, not
coming close. Javier Marzan’s strongly-Spanish Holmes will never be
bettered comedically. I have also seen two versions of the story
written by ‘BGT’ auditionee
Ben
Langley, the second version starring Joe Pasquale as Holmes
(honestly!). More recently, I have enjoyed Northern Rep’s two-main
HOUND (beating the usual three man version), and a
family-friendly
version starring renowned clown, Tweedy (Alan Digweed). Online, I
have also seen a production of Ken Ludwig’s ‘Baskerville: A
Sherlock Holmes Play’ (another amateur production favourite).
Finally, I should
mention ‘The
Baskerville Beast’, a Musical by Teddy Hayes, which I saw in
the remains of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, getting the writer to
sign my purchased copy of the OLC in the interval. The songs which I
regularly listen to are now firm favourites.
Conclusions
So after fifty dramatisations what have I learnt ? The character of ‘Frankland the crank’ is
easily written out. The pictures on radio and in a pitch black graveyard are
best. A poorly designed Hound prop can ruin built-up tension in a theatre. If
you want to make HOUND funny cast a Spaniard as Holmes. Don’t cast a geriatric
Holmes (and certainly not William Shatner). And finally, HOUND makes a
surprisingly good musical.
Favourites:
Radio/Audio: ‘The
Hound of the Baskervilles’ – Collins/Caedmon 1984
(Williamson/Rose)
Film: ‘The Hound of
the Baskervilles’ – Hammer Films 1958 (Cushing/Morrell)
TV: ‘The Hound of the
Baskervilles’ – BBC TV 1982 (Baker/Rigby)
Theatre: ‘The Hound
of the Baskervilles’ – 09 Lives 2019 (Galassi/Cain) [Play]
‘The
Hound of the Baskervilles’ – Peepolykus 2007 (Marzan/Nicholson)
[Comedy]
Click here
for a full list of dramatisations.
