STAGE REVIEW : Unsolved Crime of ‘Sherlock’: Who to Blame

Anyone who has ever been frustrated by failing to guess the outcome of a Sherlock Holmes story before Holmes tells you how elementary it all is will find some amusement at watching Holmes get a taste of what he dishes out in “Sherlock’s Last Case” at the North Coast Repertory Theatre.

But once the initial joke is over, what then? Well, there is the character of Holmes redone as a vain and comically insufferable arrogant genius. (What most upsets this Holmes about a death threat is that the would-be killer takes him for 43 rather than 39.)

Then there are some suspects to mull over, the usual twists and turns and the tedium of waiting for Holmes to figure out what Agatha Christie fans will pick up immediately: that the suspects to watch out for are the ones closest to home.

If this were “Saturday Night Live,” the denouement would follow swiftly upon the discovery of the villain. Instead, we have a script with pretensions to being comedy’s answer to the dramatic convolutions of “Sleuth,” without the pacing that keeps comedy alive.

Most of what is lively and fun about “Sherlock’s Last Case” can be credited to the deliciously detailed performance of Stanley Madruga as Holmes. Madruga has shown much talent for the proper English sneer in “Private Lives” at the La Jolla Stage Company and in a Grand Guignol play at the Bowery Theatre last year. Here he has perfected it.

But to play Sherlock Holmes as a comedy, the comic-straight man team of Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson, needs to be exploited even if only in the cursorily funny Johnny Carson-Ed McMahon mode.

But Andrew Barnicle’s direction fails to elicit any sparks between Martin Gerrish’s Watson and Madruga’s Holmes. What is worse, Gerrish’s energy level falters and crumbles under the burden of long expositions belaboring the obvious.

Interminable scene changes compound the problems. One wouldn’t mind the scene changes so much if the sets were worth waiting for, but pineapple silhouettes painted on the walls of Holmes’ famous Baker Street flat? One would be hard-pressed to find a less appropriate decorative choice, unless of course, the option were ducks. But it would be a contest.

On the brighter side, Wendy Cullum lends excellent support as Holmes’ sentimental housekeeper. You believe her when she sniffles sadly over her missing master, recalling how he used to greet her by saying: “Wipe me boots, you slovenly cow.”

But while Stina Sundberg brings attractive force to a variety of mysterious guises, tracking her wandering accent through a trickle of flubbed lines proves a perplexing and exhausting exercise. Tim Irving plays the inspector with an even more distracting accent and, worse, delivers a characterization that renders him too silly to be funny.

The only unsolved crime at the end of “Sherlock’s Last Case” is whether the real culprit in this theatrical miscue is the North Coast Rep or playwright Charles Marowitz. Alas, poor Sherlock. We knew him well before he was set up by the revisionist’s pen.

“SHERLOCK’S LAST CASE”

By Charles Marowitz. Director is Andrew Barnicle. Sets by Bernard Harland. Lighting by Jack Shepherd. Sound by Marvin Read. With Martin Gerrish, Stanley Madruga, Wendy Cullum, Stina Sundberg and Tim Irving. At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sundays. Sunday matinees at 2 in September only. Closes Sept. 25. At 987D Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach.