Magenta’s ‘Baskerville’ a comedic take on Sherlock Holmes

Who are the greatest-ever literary characters? Expect plenty of healthy debate while trying to create a top-10 list.

One character shows up in just about every grouping of great literary figures: Sherlock Holmes, whose superhuman powers of observation and deduction have come to epitomise the very idea of the great detective who never misses a clue.

Holmes was introduced to the world by author Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, and he went on to sleuth his way through not just four novels and dozens of short stories by Conan Doyle, but also through films (he’s listed as the “most portrayed movie character” by Guiness World Records) and television versions (only the latest, the BBC’s modern-day, big-budget “Sherlock” series, is wildly popular), radio plays, comic books, animations and video games.

And, of course, stage plays. The great detective will return to Vancouver’s Magenta Theater in September to figure out who is bumping off the male heirs of the Baskerville family line, in a comedy adaptation of a quintessential Arthur Conan Doyle adventure, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

‘Allo, Govnah!’

Longtime Magenta actor David Roberts plays Holmes, Magenta improviser and musician Steve Goodwin plays his sidekick, Dr. Watson, and three more actors play 32 additional characters in “Baskervilles” — Kristen Bennett, Matthew Thoreson and Casey Faubion.

“My fellow actors whirl about me through multiple characters, and I just take it all in,” Roberts said.

None of these people are native Britons, and neither is director Brenda McGinnis, but Faubion has appointed himself official accent coach for the company. There’s a very wide variety of British accents, and they telegraph a great deal about class and status — from the soft, correct, detailed sound of “Oxford” or “BBC” English, to the harsh, quick, consonant-dropping sound of working-class Cockney, for example.

Roberts said he’s enjoyed fine-tuning his upper crust English accent, which aims to make Sherlock Holmes sound brilliant and superior to lesser humans (all of them). “He’s not always right, but he makes you believe and follow the twisted path that he so enjoys discovering,” Roberts said. 

“I love dialects. Actors love diving into dialects because it’s part of being onstage,” said director McGinnis. “It’s the fun of becoming someone who’s not you.”

Once when she was a child and her parents took her to a French restaurant, McGinnis recalled, she spent the entire evening “being French” via what was surely a ridiculous French accent. “It was so much fun,” she said. 

“In one scene (in ‘Baskerville’), Casey (Faubion) comes on as a doctor with a Scottish accent. Then he steps offstage and right back on as a Welshman,” sounding completely different, she said. “Accents are important, but physical changes are, too. You’ll notice … each character has some physical attribute” that’s theirs alone, she said.

“I’m in awe of these actors and the way they’ve all embodied these characters,” McGinnins said.

Hooray for Holmes

One key Magenta person is a native Briton: founder and artistic director Jaynie Roberts, who grew up in the north of England (Liverpool, which has its own specific sort of accent) and moved to America to go to college. Roberts said she wonders whether Americans have become bigger fans of Sherlock Holmes than the English.

“When I went back over with a friend three years ago, the first thing she wanted to do was go to the Sherlock Holmes museum,” Roberts said. “I wouldn’t have bothered. Maybe when you grow up with something all around you it’s not as special. English people grow up with Sherlock Holmes” like he’s part of the furniture, she said.

But her previous staging of a Sherlock Holmes play was “hugely successful,” she said. “American audiences are clamoring for Sherlock Holmes.”