Re-Imagined Radio presents Metropolitan Performing Arts and other community volunteers and their performance of The Immortal Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous of all fictional detectives and
stories about his exploits are considered some of the finest of the
detective and crime fiction genre.

Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, first appeared in “A Study in
Scarlett,” a story by Scottish physican and author Arthur Conan Doyle
published in 1887. A series of stories, beginning with “A Scandal in
Bohemia,” appeared in The Strand Magazine in 1891 and continued until 1927.
Doyle
was prolific, authoring four novels and fifty-six short stories about
his fictional detective. The result is world-wide popularity and impact
of Sherlock Holmes and a profound
effect on mystery and detective writing and popular culture with
thousands of stories written by authors other than Conan Doyle being
turned into films, television programs, stage and radio plays, video
games, and other media for more than 100 years. Examples include Agatha
Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, as well as antihero
gentlemen thiefs like A.J. Raffles and Arsene Lupin. Film adaptations
starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, the BBC One TV series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and Elementary,
set in contemporary New York starring Johnny Miller and Lucy Liu as a
female Dr. Watson are other examples. In all, Holmes’ popularity and his
fame as a detective makes it easy for members of literary and fan
societies to believe him real.

Arthur Conan Doyle grew tired of Sherlock Holmes and wanted to shift his
writing focus to other stories. So, he killed off Holmes in “The Final
Problem,” first published in 1893. Holmesian fans would have nothing to
do with this and Doyle was forced to bring his fictional detective back
from the dead in The Hound of the Baskervilles, a novel published in The Strand Magazine
between 1901 and 1902. Cleverly, Doyle set the time frame before
Holmes’ death, and so Sherlock Holmes remains immortal even though he
never lived.

This Re-Imagined Radio performance has an
impressive pedigree. It begins with a stage play written by Arthur Conan
Doyle in 1897. The following year, American playwright and actor
William Hooker Gillette worked with Doyle to rewrite the play for
American audiences who wanted melodramatic stories about stoic, strong
heroes
keeping their wits about them in both dangerous and romantic situations.

Gillette introduced several props now considered Sherlock Holmes
icons, including his curved pipe (easier to hold in the mouth while
speaking and did not obstruct the audience’s view of the actor’s mouth),
a splendid dressing gown, the violin, the magnifying glass, the
Scottish deerstalker cap, and the phrase “Oh, this is elementary my dear
fellow,” later changed by the popular press to “Elementary, my dear
Watson.” Interesting trivia fact: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never used the
phrase “elementary, my dear fellow” in his novels or stories about
Holmes.

Gillette performed his Sherlock Holmes melodrama during
hundreds of performances in the United States and England. His play was
adapted for movies and radio. In 1938, it was adapted and performed by
The Mercury Theatre on the Air, starring Orson Welles as Sherlock
Holmes. From this lineage Re-Imagined Radio crafted its own adaptation
of The Immortal Sherlock Holmes.

LEARN more at the Re-Imagined Radio website.