Any actor taking on Sherlock Holmes has a big hat to fill.
“It’s nerve-wracking to play such an iconic character,” said Richard Nguyen Sloniker, who’s donning the deerstalker in Ken Ludwig’s “Baskerville,” opening at Village Theatre in Issaquah on Jan. 23 (previews begin Jan. 20). “Everybody has such a clear idea of who he is in their mind from different forms of media. So it’s a little scary stepping into that role, because there are huge fans and you don’t want to disappoint them.”
Still, iconic characters have become something of a calling card for the longtime Seattle actor. He’s played perspicacious sleuth Hercule Poirot and dryly poised valet Jeeves multiple times at Taproot Theatre. He recurred as a dashing romantic lead in the world of Jane Austen as Mr. Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice” and Colonel Brandon in “Sense and Sensibility.” At Village Theatre, he’s livened a series of roles with his urbane charm, often laced with something else, like a vengeful streak in “Dial M for Murder.”
In “Baskerville,” the tone is downright madcap, with Sloniker playing Holmes, Avery Clark playing Dr. Watson and three other actors handling nearly 40 additional characters.
“It’s really intimidating being with such funny actors like Calder (Jameson Shilling) and Mark Emerson and Jonelle Jordan,” Sloniker said. “Oh my gosh, they’re so funny. It is intimidating, but it’s a team sport. We’re playing together.”
Sloniker’s comic ability was not frequently on display when he began establishing a name for himself in 2010 as the co-founder of fringe company Azeotrope. But comedy has always been in his wheelhouse, said Desdemona Chiang, Azeotrope’s other half.
“He’s always been really funny,” Chiang said. “He’s incredibly handsome, and so back then, I think that kind of got in the way of him doing comedy. For a while, he (would say), ‘I’m really funny, I swear to god,’ but they would always cast (him) in these serious, dramatic roles.”
Sloniker and Chiang met as graduate students at the University of Washington School of Drama, and though they didn’t work together much in school, they clicked early on, Chiang said.
“You go to class, and then you sit in the circle, and there’s one other Asian person in the room, and you make eye contact across the room and go, ‘I see you,’” she said. “It was like finding a kind of sibling in the program, and we found out that we just had a lot in common. Artistically, we were really interested in work that was gritty. We were really interested in work that was left of center a little bit.”
Focusing on stories of marginalized people, Azeotrope hit the ground running with poetic, hard-edged plays like Adam Rapp’s “Red Light Winter,” Joshua Rollins’ “25 Saints” and Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” each offering a showcase for Chiang’s emotionally forthright direction and Sloniker’s skill for playing desperate or pathetic characters.
Though the pair’s careers have diverged, with Chiang an in-demand director nationally and locally (next up: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Union Arts Center in February) and Sloniker carving out his new niche, both say Azeotrope isn’t over, despite not having produced a show since 2017’s staging of Robert Schenkkan’s “Building the Wall.”
“We’re still Azeotrope,” Sloniker said. “We still have plans and schemes for the future. Our schedules have not been as congruent as they once were, but we do intend to produce more, maybe moving to not just theater, but film as well.”
Onstage, Sloniker said his work has been impacted by his ongoing collaboration with Taproot Theatre, where he’s performed in numerous shows over the past decade. Producing Artistic Director Karen Lund saw Sloniker’s performance in “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train” in 2012, the catalyst for a long, transformational relationship.
“I really love that theater,” Sloniker said. “I think working in that theater has changed me in a way. Karen and Taproot choose plays of hope, and that has made me rethink how I want to perform. There’s something specific about Taproot and their mission that awoke something in me personally.”
The evolution of Sloniker’s career is a natural one, Chiang said.
“It’s that ’50s screwball comedy leading man: He’s that guy,” she said. “It took like, 10 or 15 years for him to age into that role, but I think that’s kind of where he lives. He has classical good looks and also incredible timing and a very live spirit onstage.”
Shilling has seen that up close many times, with the first time in 2019 after co-starring with Sloniker in Taproot’s “The Bishop’s Wife.” More recently, his frenetically eccentric Wooster has been the odd-couple compatriot to Sloniker’s Jeeves in several Taproot shows. And in “Baskerville,” he takes on half a dozen characters swirling around Sloniker’s Holmes.
“Whenever I’m onstage with Richard, I always feel like he’s very connected and very present,” Shilling said. “Getting to do something like ‘Sense and Sensibility’ with him here at Village, where he played a couple of big, broad, elaborate, kind of wackier characters, compared to playing Jeeves, the ultimate stoic, less-is-more character — it’s pretty spectacular to see that kind of range.
“He’s a treasure of our theatrical community here in Seattle,” Shilling continued, “and I’m so grateful to have gotten the opportunities to work with him and act alongside him.”
What’s next for Sloniker? He has already expanded his career beyond the stage, working as a voice-over and motion-capture artist for video games, including the popular Destiny series. He plans to continue to expand his artistic palette, revisiting some short stories he’s written to add vocal performance and narration. In the theater, he’d like to reprise Poirot, perhaps in “Murder on the Orient Express,” and return to Shakespeare performance after a while away. But ultimately, he’s open to what the future brings.
“I really want to follow a director with a clear vision, with a clear story to tell,” Sloniker said. “If I could just continue working with artists I admire, I’d count myself an extremely fortunate actor.”
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