FringeReview UK 2024
The Valley of Fear
Blackeyed Theatre in association with South Hill Park Productions
Genre: Adaptation, Costume, Drama, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Borough, Large Studio
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
We’re often presented with images of Sherlock Holmes’ ‘The Final Problem’: that 1893 struggle with Moriarty over the Reichenbach Falls. But what about the first?
The Valley of Fear adapted and directed by Nick Lane is in fact a prequel, published much later, in 1915. Based on the last Holmes full-length novel by Conan Doyle, it’s where that name, a bit like Voldemort’s, never to be mentioned erupts: Moriarty. Revived from its 2021 premiere, Blackeyed Theatre in association with South Hill Park Productions return with it to Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Large Studio, till April 13th.
Being five-strong too there’s a riveting pace and lack of clutter a full-scale production might offer. Blackeyed have kept their telling as lean as Holmes’ hawk-like face, and it pounces. If you admire 221b at all, see it this week.
Adapted and Directed by Nick Lane, Composer and Sound Designer Tristan Parkes, Set Designer Victoria Spearing, Costume Designer Naomi Gibbs. Lighting Designer Oliver Welsh, Action Designer Robert Myles, Assistant Director Lola Barak, CSMs Jay Hirst, James Boyer-Smith, Set Construction Russell Pearn, Photography/Videography Alex Harvey-Brown, Social Media Holly Admason, Producer Adrian McDougall
Till April 13th
Review
We’re often presented with images of Sherlock Holmes’ ‘The Final Problem’: that 1893 struggle with Moriarty over the Reichenbach Falls. But what about the first?
The Valley of Fear adapted and directed by Nick Lane is in fact a prequel, published much later, in 1915. Based on the last Holmes full-length novel by Conan Doyle, it’s where that name, a bit like Voldemort’s, never to be mentioned, erupts: Moriarty. Revived from its 2021 premiere, Blackeyed Theatre in association with South Hill Park Productions return with it to Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Large Studio, till April 13th.
Being a Blackeyed production you might anticipate a mobile set, singing with multi-instrumentalists like last year’s Oh What a Lovely War! which toured to the Large.
Indeed composer and sound designer Tristan Parkes arranges several pieces a cappella for the five-strong cast from an 1844 Hymnal and elsewhere, for American scenes. Is there a twinge that Sherlock doesn’t break out his Strad? It’s not that kind of production.
Cleverly filling in the backstory that’s otherwise lumped as more than the latter half of the novel, Lane splits Valley between present-day 1895 and Pennsylvania, 1875. It’s Conan Doyle’s long-contemplated treatment of the Molly Maguires, whose history’s still contested.
Starting out nobly as an Irish miners’ resistance union against exploitative landlords and bosses, in the Pennsylvania coalfields, it allegedly resorted to terrorism. That’s where a little ensemble singing breaks out. Otherwise the music’s recorded: doomily atmospheric but resolute.
Being Blackeyed, the production’s stylishly shack-like. Blackeyed designer Victoria Spearing makes the most of wooden props including crates and a curiously scaffolded-looking dresser with a backdrop of dark-green William Morris paper. Naomi Gibbs, another Blackeyed regular riffs a gallimaufry of period dress. Oliver Welsh’s lighting plays sunlight over bleached wood or lantern-pierced dark.
Holmes (Bobby Bradley) is at screech-pitch boredom, as Watson (Joseph Derrington) at his typewriter knows too well. They’re in stark contrast as Bradley – who also delights in the violent, skirling-voiced Teddy Baldwin in the 1875 scenes – enjoys a light, clipped tone: it’s refreshingly believable, shorn of the stock Holmes voice.
Derrington opts for a younger avuncular figure, capable though of outrage at Holmes and a crisis in their relationship. In America, he’s the hoods’ frightened, wibbly, unwilling accountant Thad Morris.
One Porlock gets a coded message to the duo, imperilling his life, as Mrs Hudson (Alice Osmanski’s first appearance) helps decode it. “King takes Pawn” we’re next told by ‘Napoleon’ himself. Holmes doesn’t play chess and didn’t want Watson or his wife involved.
The game’s afoot of course. After their realising the message threatens the life of one Douglas, in breezes Inspector McDonald (Gavin Molloy‘s first role) with news of the man’s murder. He passes them over to local inspector and Holmes fan Detective White Mason (Blake Kubena’s English role) and we’re into multi-roling witnesses.
Lane’s faithful to the plot, yet compresses the whole into a chunky 150 minutes with interval. It’s compellingly, occasionally comically rendered, yet plays straight. First-rate acting means humour arises from Conan Doyle, not from 21st-century guying or tired parody.
The originals blaze through with sincerity and humour; inevitably there’s theatricality with Osmanski’s deaf housekeeper Mrs Allen. A door slams she’s convinced, at 11pm. Though the murder took place it seems at 11.30.
Osmanski’s swiftly Ivy Douglas, a cold widow, alongside dodgy ex-prospector friend Cecil Barker (Molloy again). What’s their role in the case of the faceless corpse? There’s that bloody footprint on the window, a moat that Holmes knows can’t be drained. Where could the murderer hide after the drawbridge was raised? Moments like this show Conan Doyle winking mischief.
Molloy himself enjoys a snarling villain as ‘Bodymaster’ McGinty back in 1875, and fleetingly as suave Dublinesque Moriarty at an art exhibition. It’s where Kubena thrives as ambivalent gang recruit, Jack McMurdo: urbane, deadly, able to match McGinty in a draw and draw laughter from him. McMurdo soon ousts Bradley’s violent Baldwin from McGinty’s regard, becoming master-strategist, finding ways to intimidate without killing.
And keeping his dealings from the honest woman he loves, Ettie Shafter (Osmanski again, winningly morphing from Scottish landlady to American innocent and middle-class Ivy), daughter of crusading newspaper editor Shafter (Derrington, briefly).
How these plots dovetail, how they resolve and twist beyond even Holmes’ contriving, provides one of Conan Doyle’s darkest, thrilling – and inevitably most theatrical – plots. The production’s tight, acting’s first-rate: Bradley’s given Holmes a new edge, humane in his remoteness. Whilst Derrington’s two roles strip away bluff to pulse with warmth and fright, Kubena makes McMurdo a charismatic force to match Bradley’s Holmes. Molloy shifts from mild-seeming urbanity in two roles to McGinty’s snarl of a face: it’s a physical transformation. Osmanski too sweeps the widest range of voices, hunching into age and back.
Being five-strong too there’s a riveting pace and lack of clutter a full-scale production might offer. Blackeyed have kept their telling as lean as Holmes’ hawk-like face, and it pounces. If you admire 221b at all, see it this week.
