We all know about whodunnits. But a who-is-it, well, that’s a little less elementary.
“Holmes & Watson,” newly opened at Laguna Playhouse, takes Sherlock Holmes and multiplies the world’s most famous detective by three, each of three men claiming to be him.
This time it’s up to biographer/fanboy John Watson, M.D. to deduce who is and who isn’t, why everyone is sequestered in a Scottish island mental asylum on a proverbial dark and stormy night and what the devil is going on here, anyway?
Too many spoilers? Keep calm and carry on. That’s just the set-up for the game afoot in Jeffrey Hatcher’s intricate 85-minute, intermission free theatrical Rubik’s Cube. (Hmmm, how quickly could Sherlock have solved one of those?)
The first mystery you may be trying to deduce for yourself is whether you have to be a Sherlock Holmes geek to enjoy this play in the first place.
Solutions to that probably are, in this order: 1) “not really” and 2) “well, if you are, it heightens the fun.”
Beyond the Holmesian particulars, director David Ellenstein and his cast of seven present a non-spoofy, tense drama where, even if mysteries aren’t your thing, the atmospheric chamber staging is fueled with vibrant characterizations, animated by closely held, cunning secrets only slowly revealed.
This said, Hatcher has also layered in quite a few Easter Eggs throughout the play to gong Big Ben-worthy memory chimes for anyone who ever cozied down at 221B Baker Street with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s indelible short stories and novels.
At one point in the history of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle got so sick of writing about his most famous creation — the oh-so-scientific (ahem) Guinness World Records determined Holmes to be the most often used human literary character in the history of film and TV — that he killed Sherlock off.
Eventually, with bills to pay, and due to a viral pushback from a pre-internet worldwide fan base which even Taylor Swift would wish for, Doyle brought Holmes back.
This matters here because “Holmes & Watson” is set in the aftermath of the detective’s dramatic struggle at the edge of Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland with his arch-rival, criminal mastermind Professor Moriarity.
Both, in Doyle’s story “The Final Problem,” seemingly plunged to their deaths. Hatcher uses the incident as his own jumping off point, with flashbacks to the key moment on the brink of the falls as an aid for Watson to explore his mystery of these three Sherlocks.
The flashbacks are useful as stage devices for Ellenstein, too, because at points the dialogue strays into the high grass of talkiness, expositional exchanges that while useful to the unfolding plot come off as tangential in the moment, dampening the pace.
Leavening the score is fine ensemble acting as the characters warily interact with each other, abrupt accusations flying and a kind of edginess in play where you never quite know when someone may lunge at someone else.
Seasoned actor Richard Baird plays a Watson whom Sherlockians have never quite encountered before.
Baird’s no-nonsense sleuthing energies could pass for you-know-who on the prowl, probing, stopping to eagle-eye a prop or wheeling around to grill a character.
Early on Watson employs the techniques of his partner for sizing a person up with a single glance and delivering a classic, dispassionate autopsy dissecting their finer and lesser points.
The actor — who played Watson at Laguna’s sibling theater, North Coast Rep in 2018 — has the focal energies for this. But he also occasionally conveys a bit of a fluttery, blustery Watson, harking back most familiarly to the doctor of the 14 movies in the 1940s with character actor Nigel Bruce as the slightly bewildered sidekick.
The supporting cast … well, let’s just name them and leave it for theater-goers to discover. Trust that Matt Koenig, Matthew Floyd Miller, Christopher M. Williams, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, Alice Sherman and Mike Peebler ably do a lot.
Stephen Gifford’s two-story set wrapping around the back of the stage is suitably forbidding, with lighting designer Jared A. Sayeg’s dark shadings enhancing the broody atmospherics.
The top ramp is flanked by an open space that sound and projections designer Ian Scot uses to fund the incident at the Reichenbach Falls, torrents of projected water crashing down.
In Doyle’s final Holmes short story “His Last Bow,” published in 1917 during World War I, Holmes praises “Good old Watson. You are the one fixed point in a changing age.”
Yet, in this play, Watson is not at all the same as we know him. And neither is Holmes as we traditionally encounter him. But glad to say, ‘Holmes & Watson” nonetheless makes us feel at home with these enduring characters all over again.
‘Holmes & Watson’
Rating: 3 stars (from a possible 4)
Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach
When: Through June 16. 7:30 p.m., Wednesday-Fridays; 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturdays; 1 and 5 p.m. Sundays, 1 and 5:30 p.m. There will be added performances on Thursday, June 6 at 2:00 p.m. and Tuesday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m. There will be no performance on Sunday, June 16 at 5:30 p.m.
Tickets: $45-84
Information: 949-497-2787; lagunaplayhouse.com
