peteg's blog - noise - theatre - 2014 12 04 HolmesAndWatson

City Lit Theatre: Holmes and Watson

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Stool on bicycle, Milwaukee Avenue, 4.20pm.

Another Goldstar ticket: $14.50 + $4.25 service fee = $18.75. I unexpectedly bought a stool at a discount furniture shop on Milwaukee, and after walking it back to the flat, I got lazy and took the Red Line up to Berwyn, mistaking it for Bryn Mawr. The El at peak-hour in winter is not fun as everyone's dressed up to the max, so the carriage quickly becomes stuffy and I overheat. Layers are all well and good if you can shed them when you need to. I do wish I'd bought the stool a week ago; like the speakers it makes the space far more livable. At Bryn Mawr (a cute little strip of shops), I had dinner at The Little India: a combo, tikka chicken, a tikka masala chicken (really a butter chicken), vegies (aloo matar?), rice, naan. Decent, but no heat at all.

There were quite a few more people at the church than last time. I'm guessing about half of the audience was blind (literally; it was some kind of social outing), and this style of theatre accommodated that perfectly, being mostly spoken word with some suggestive mime. I was the youngest there by about a decade. We got two stories: A Scandal in Bohemia (featuring Irene Adler) and The Final Problem (featuring Professor Moriarty). I enjoyed Adam Bitterman's deft accent work as Watson and sundry characters, which glued the whole thing together, and James Sparling was quite fine as Holmes and Moriarty. Adrienne Matzen has a brief turn as Irene.

This is a somehow old-fashioned kind of entertainment; arch language, and unconflicted characters, with a moral clarity that only Batman and ghee have now.

The Chicago Stage Standard gave it a decent review, as did the Reader.