[NEohioPAL] Review of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" at Actors' Summit

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Actors' Summit's 'Hound' is an old dog needing new tricks

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, than a spoof - such as the one currently on stage at Actors' Summit in Akron -- must be a backhanded compliment.  

 

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" is a recent send-up of the notoriously somber piece of turn-of-the-20th century fiction of the same name by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  In it, Sherlock Holmes investigates a murder at Baskerville Hall to determine if, as locals claim, the family is cursed by a supernatural hound that has been killing for centuries.  

 

British playwrights Steven Canny and John Nicholson condense and poke fun at the novel's gothic plot points and play each anal-retentive deduction by its hero for a laugh.  And with all this delivered through vaudevillian slapstick and assorted slap-shtick, it is a cheap laugh at that.  

 

Cheap is a bona fide artistic choice and it is certainly one way to go to entertain an audience.  

For more of this review, go to: http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/article_bc7eb776-798c-11e4-9857-0b9333d4c56b.html
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