It’s spring of 2021 in London, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth and sidekick are about to meet.
But this time they’re women.
In playwright Kate Hamill’s “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B,” Dr. Joan Watson, a recent divorcee, absconds to London after her perfectly ordered life has collapsed due to the pandemic. There she meets Sherlock Holmes, a genius, loner detective, the Felix to her Oscar, the yin to her yang, and the two become roommates and buddies.
The comedy kicks off the Fine Arts Center Theatre Company’s new season with previews Thursday and Friday at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. The show opens Saturday and runs through Oct. 5.
“The play is packed with our collective longing to have fun with other people that we were experiencing in 2021,” said director Katy Walsh. “Both are surprised to find themselves in a friendship. It’s also the story of how we become friends and in relationships with people who make life more fun. And it just so happens that daily life for them is solving crimes.”
While the cast is small, with Prentiss Benjamin and Jessica Austgen playing the leads and two other actors (Johanna Carlisle-Zepeda and Nicholas Robert Ortiz) playing at least three roles apiece, the crimes keep coming, including a man found murdered in a motel room, until the duo face down a villain who threatens to break their winning streak.
Hamill is known for her feminist, female-centered adaptations of classic works, including Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlett Letter” and “Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really,” her version of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
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“Her plays are very actor-centered,” Walsh said. “They move fast so they’re a fun challenge of how we jump from moment to moment. And I love how she centers complicated women in her stories so it feels like there are a lot of different aspects to them. It makes it rewarding to work on as a woman.”
Austgen, who plays Watson, was a fan of the Sherlock canon. To prepare for the role she reread a few of the stories, but also garnered inspiration from a more unlikely place: “The Pitt,” a fast-paced medical procedural on HBO Max.
“I was telling my husband she had this COVID-19 experience working in the ER,” Austgen said. “He asked if I’ve watched ‘The Pitt.’ So I jumped in and found Noah Wylie’s character arc similar to what Watson experienced.”
Benjamin was a bit intimidated to play the iconic Holmes, she says. To prepare, she refamiliarized herself with the stories she read when she was young and got acquainted with other activities Holmes does in the play.
“I took a little bit of fencing and watched a whole bunch of BBC English dramas and mysteries,” she said. “For a play like this you want to be loose and relaxed because it’s like an amusement park ride, where you get on board and it doesn’t stop until the very end.”
More than 100 years since the introduction of Holmes into the lexicon, it still seems he and Watson are as popular and reimagined as ever.
“I suspect we all wish we were Holmes in some ways, as sharp as he is, and we wish we had all the answers, which Holmes often seemed to do,” Walsh said. “We also like a character like Watson who brings the human side to Holmes and helps to balance them out. Holmes is a tortured genius and most of us know we’re not geniuses. We like to see that crazy genius does need an ordinary person and that we have something to bring to the table.”
Contact the writer: 636-0270
Contact the writer: 636-0270
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source gazette.com ’
