The Glen Arbor Players and director Don Kuehlhorn are kickin’ it old school in their next production, “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily,” using an old-timey radio show format to present this new Holmes comedy/mystery by contemporary Seattle actor and playwright Katie Forgette.
The play combines historical real people with fictional ones. Lily Langtry, the famous American actress, and Oscar Wilde, the famous British author, are dear friends. When Mrs. Langtry is blackmailed over intimate letters she and the Duke of Windsor exchanged, Oscar Wilde brings in his friend Sherlock Holmes to catch the blackguard. With Holmes come other fictional characters like Dr. Watson, Professor Moriarty, and various accomplices. A few cast members play more than one character, and one character even plays more than one character. An announcer assists in sorting them out and narrating the action. Like in the days of radio plays, the actors use their voices to make the characters and plot real.
Letters from a years-ago love affair with the Prince of Wales threaten scandal for Mrs. Langtry, but there’s more to the story, and the very Crown seems threatened before the real demand is discovered. Secondrate criminals are behind the blackmail scheme, but there’s more to that story too.
