Sherlock's Last Case

by
Charles Marowitz

Director Scenic Design Costume Design Lighting Design Sound Design Properties Design Hair and Wig Design Makeup DesignMarketing/PRProd. Stage Manager House Manager Light Board Operators Sound Board Operator Back Stage Crew Lead Deck Technical Director Master Electrician Set Construction Lighting Crew Assistant Sound Design Casting Coordinator Casting Associate Production Photography Graphic Design Direct Marketing Copywriter

David Rose David Potts A. Jeffrey Schoenberg Jeremy Pivnick Drew Dalzell MacAndME Diane Martinous Joni Rudesill David Elzer/Demand PR Vernon Willet Lee Webb Pitts James King Vanessa Van Zerr Brian Cordoba Andrea Dean M.E. McElveney Spencer Howard Robert T. Kyle Jeremy Bryden Design Setters Corporation James King Eleanor Wood Watson Bradshaw Cricket Myers Patricia Cullen Denise Dillard Michael Lamont Ricky Vodka, Rich Lippmann Write Hand Creative

CHARACTERS

Sherlock Holmes Dr. Watson Mrs. Hudson Liza Inspector Lestrade An Imposter Damion

Time Winters Louis Lotorto Lisa Beezley Pat Caldwell Brett Elliott Timothy Zurich Carter Yepsen

Sherlock and the Good Doctor

In December of 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle murdered Sherlock Holmes--- deliberately, premeditatedly, and in cold blood. That was the month that The Strand magazine published the Holmes-Watson adventure entitled The Final Problem, the story that had Holmes and his nemesis the evil genius Professor Moriarity plunging together in a death struggle over Switzerland's Reichenbach Falls. In a diary entry just after he completed the tale, he wrote, with brutal simplicity: "Killed Holmes." The world reacted with horror and shock. Thousands wore black armbands or veils, and Conan Doyle received letters of protest and sorrow from around the world begging him to return Holmes to life. He resisted for close to a decade, until The Hound of the Baskervilles was serialized beginning in 1901. This story did not bring Holmes back from his Alpine tomb---it was merely a flashback to a time earlier in his career. Then in 1903, Dr. Watson told jubilant readers that Sherlock Holmes was back among the living in The Adventure of the Empty House. It seems the great detective had escaped the fall and had hidden out for several years, but he was back, as penetratingly perceptive and devastatingly logical as ever.

The Sherlock Holmes adventures are likely the most imitated in all of literature, and they are still being studied, annotated and discussed across the globe. They have spawned countless pastiches and parodies, and it is certain that the list would number well over 4,000. Most of the Conan Doyle stories are narrated by his loyal companion and faithful biographer John Watson, a man described as "a middle-sized, strongly built man---square jaw, thick neck, a moustache." He has suffered mightily at the hands of some scholars, corpulent character actors, and the public since he made his appearance in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet. In the collected stories he was both storyteller, brave aide-de-camp, and buffer between the cold, blinding light of Holmes's intellect and the reader. The stories without Watson, or in which he plays a minor role, are generally thought to be more arid and lacking in humanity when Holmes's shameless narcissism goes unchecked.

Literature never produced a relationship more symbiotic, nor a warmer and more timeless friendship. The Sherlock Holmes-Dr. Watson partnership has become perhaps the most recognizably iconic in all of fiction. It is our collective knowledge and preconceptions of this relationship that is the springboard for Sherlock's Last Case.

-David Rose

SPECIAL THANKS

Derek Bjornsen, A Noise Within, Bardwell's on the Boulevard, Brad Brown, Abbie Bundy, Andrew Campbell, The City of Burbank, The Colony Board of Trustees, Brooks Gardner, Sarah Hartmann, Mark Henderson, Demetrio James - Emergent Entertainment, Chuck Olsen - UCLA, Salvador Palacios, Patterson Graphics, Pomodoro Cucina, Rich Roche, Bill Shaw - San Gabriel Civic Auditorium, Southwest Airlines, Wadler Data Systems, Lee Wochner - CounterIntuity