Remember early in the shutdown, when theaters making experimental forays into online production felt obligated to apologize for their product's resemblance to (shudder) TELEVISION? A year later, however, even A-listers like Goodman and Steppenwolf see nothing unseemly in filming group scenes one solitary actor at a time and splicing the separate parts together afterward—just like in a (gasp) MOVIE. Lifeline Theater has now extended the analogy a step further by converting one of their Jeff-winning shows into a (cover your ears, children) MINI-SERIES suitable for viewing in six weekly segments, or eventually (oh, the horror) binge-watching in its entirety.
To be sure, maybe "watched" is not the correct word, since Christopher M. Walsh's script for this addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon has been reconfigured to audio play format, thus eliminating the encumbrances—home-based studios, DIY stagecraft, webcam windows, bandwidth-obstructing zoom interference—wrought by antiseptic social conditions still in effect. Instead, the reboot employs technology associated with preservation of music and spoken-word performance to create reproductions familiar to audiences raised on radio drama or, more recently, versed in earbud-podcast consumption.
How about the story of Miss Holmes, though? What distinguishes this whodunit from the rest of the copyright-free fanfics starring Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary Victorian supersleuth?
Episode One introduces us to government high-up Mycroft Holmes, brother of Miss Sherlock Holmes, the latter of whose feminist views and unladylike behavior often get her into scrapes requiring the intervention of her exasperated sibling. When her latest fracas leaves her with a black eye after a scuffle with a sanitarium orderly, her injury leads her to the recently-opened Royal Free Hospital at the London School of Medicine for Women operated by (real-life) pioneering physician Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. There, the unrepentant Sherlock meets Doctor Dorothy Watson, whose expertise encompasses advice on unarmed self-defense techniques.
Just before the end of the episode, we meet Mrs. Lizzie Chapman, the recipient of anonymous letters warning her to beware of her husband, Police Inspector Thomas Chapman, whose previous two wives have died in mysterious circumstances. Any alarms this uxoricidal premise may have set off in 2016 are likely diminished in 2021, so you'll have to wait for Episode Two to learn more.
Chicago playgoers (like me) who were lucky enough to have seen the original live-performance version of Miss Holmes are exhorted not to give away the plot to those first encountering it one chapter at a time. besides, it's rumored that a sequel is in the works, opening after—all together now—the Big Stage Freeze is over.
