"intriguing...intense...intricate"
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson come alive on the Berkshire Theatre Festival's Main Stage in "The Crucifer of Blood", an intricate multiple-murder mystery by Paul Giovanni.
The play opens in 1857 at the Red Fort in Agra, India. Three British soldiers enter into a deadly covenant fueled by greed and deceit. Thirty years pass and scene Two finds us in the study of 221-B Baker St. with Holmes suffering the ravings of a cocaine addict in need of a fix and something to engage his mind. Enter Watson, a damsel in distress, and the rest, shall we say, is literary history.
Playwright Giovanni brilliantly pulls together the central themes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Stephen Spinella as Holmes speaks the famous lines, portrays the familiar persona and is convincingly brilliant, insane and humorous. David Atkin's Watson is appealingly sensitive in counterpoint to Holmes. Gary Sloan, as the bumbling and arrogant Inspector Lestrade, is good for quite a few laughs.
And what a stage set!! I was especially intrigued as an opium den rose out of the stage floor for scene Five. Intense melodrama and sudden gunshots kept me on the edge of my seat. A fabulous opening night.