The Edmonds Driftwood Players cast of “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery” poses on the Wade James Theatre stage. From left are actors Elex Hill, Pepper Hambrick, Robert Barnett, Brynne Garman and Ingrid Sanai Buron. The run of the Ken Ludwig play continues through Sept. 24. Courtesy Edmonds Driftwood Players

The Edmonds Driftwood Players cast of “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery” poses on the Wade James Theatre stage. From left are actors Elex Hill, Pepper Hambrick, Robert Barnett, Brynne Garman and Ingrid Sanai Buron. The run of the Ken Ludwig play continues through Sept. 24. Courtesy Edmonds Driftwood Players

Driftwood’s ‘Baskerville’ would greatly benefit from faster pace

EDMONDS — Driftwood’s past season ended with a Ken Ludwig play. Season 59 began this past week with another of Ludwig’s comedic mysteries.

“Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery” continues Thursday through Sunday at Driftwood’s Wade James Theatre.

Yep, Ludwig is a favorite with the Edmonds Driftwood Players. While the playwright’s work is produced on Broadway, it’s safe to say that his primary fan base is among regional and community theater actors and audiences.

Many of Ludwig’s works can be done with spare sets, making it easier for cash-strapped community thespians to produce the plays. And his shows in a community setting have a broad appeal — to mystery lovers and people who just love to laugh.

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To do Ludwig right, however, the actors have to clip along at a pace that even professionals can find challenging. My main criticism of this Edmonds Driftwood Players show is that the cast needs to pick up that pace. I saw it on the second night of the run and perhaps by this weekend, the speed will have improved.

By all means, go check it out. The audience this past Saturday laughed a lot and loved the fact that three of the five actors play about 40 roles between them and must make quick costume and accent changes, even on stage.

Yep, the play is based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes crime novel, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

For this Driftwood show, director Paul Fouhy, a retired high school drama coach, phoned Ludwig to ask what the playwright thought of casting women in the roles of detective Sherlock Holmes and his surgeon friend Dr. Watson. Ludwig gave his blessing.

In the program, Fouhy explains that, “We have not made the principal characters female but rather have simply cast women to play the parts.” The idea is that women might more profoundly portray the friendship between Holmes and Watson.

And the goal, according to Ludwig, is that the audience will enjoy all the elements that live theater (and its suspension of belief) affords.

The show stars Kris “Pepper” Hambrick as Holmes and Brynne Garman as Watson. Veteran regional actors, Hambrick and Garman understand their characters. They do well in men’s clothing and are adept at using emotion and physicality employed by men. However, to fully get the women-playing-male-characters idea, I might have dispensed with Watson’s unneeded mustache. (Hambrick was in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at Driftwood and Garman’s Driftwood shows include “Doubt.”)

The other characters, who all nearly stole the show, are played by: film, TV and Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Robert Alan Barnett (who was Driftwood’s spring production of Ludwig’s “The Game’s Afoot!”); veteran TV actor Ingrid Sanai Buron (who previously was in Driftwood’s production of Agatha Christie’s “Spider’s Web”) and Elex Hill, a recent graduate of the University of Washington.

The designers and crew have done a great job. Notable is the work by dialect coach Marianna de Fazio.

“Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery”

Edmonds Driftwood Players production of the Ken Ludwig mystery/comedy continues through Sept. 24 with performances at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday at Wade James Theatre, 950 Main ST., Edmonds. Tickets — $25 general, $22 for seniors, juniors and military — are available at www.edmondsdriftwoodplayers.org or by phoning 425-774-9600, option 1. ASL interpretation is available on Sept. 16 as is preferred seating for deaf patrons.

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