An aversion to Sherlock Holmes stories and to their occult-loving author Arthur Conan Doyle undoubtedly makes me the wrong critic to be reviewing Mysterious Circumstances, Michael Mitnick’s new play which just opened at the Geffen. Mitnick, working on a Geffen/Edgerton Foundation commission, has turned Grann’s magazine article (see above) into an elaborate whodunit involving the death not only of Holmes but of his superfan, Richard Lancelyn Green (Alan Tudyk, doubling up). Fantasy and reality, past and present, intertwine in Mysterious Circumstances, making for a kind of psychedelic time machine in which Holmes ends up investigating his own possible murder. It’s all very clever and post-modern, but it still failed to connect with me in any kind of visceral fashion. I watched the play detachedly, as I would a comic-strip movie. What did fascinate me, though, were the play’s production values. Set Designer Brett J. Banakis, working with projection designers Kaitlyn Pietras and Jason H. Thompson, plus Illusion Designers Francis Menotti and David Kwong, put on a magic show replete with fast-changing scenery, walls that folded in and out of themselves, dazzling backdrops…and many other tricks and stunts that defy description. Would that the script were half as good as their work. I came away feeling that the actors also deserved the highest praise possible. Led by Tudyk as Holmes/Green, Ramiz Monsef as Watson (and others), and Austin Durant as Doyle (and others), the seven-person cast gave performances that can only be called perfect.
