“This jovial, clever little musical whodunit ... both a legitimate Sherlock mystery set in a rural English town and a bit of meta- dramatic fun involving a writer who has killed off the one who brought him fame. It’s a fantastic idea for a musical....This is a promising new musical about an old favorite that seems unlikely ever to go out of style.”
The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes
Book by John Reeger
Music and Lyrics by Julie Shannon & Michael Mahler
Winner 2016 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work!
Cast requirements: 9 M, 4W
Despite the popularity of his Sherlock Holmes adventures, Arthur Conan Doyle has grown weary of writing them. “I’ve been grinding out these damn mysteries month after month!” he grumbles. He wants to write weightier fare. His solution? He pens “The Final Problem” in which he kills off his famous detective.
But when Doyle’s readers discover their beloved sleuth has fallen to his death at Reichenbach Falls, they are out- raged. Besieged by calls and an irate mob outside his door, Doyle escapes to the countryside. There he begins to investigate the case of the Wyrley Ripper, a court case of a young man of mixed ethnic heritage who has been convicted—wrongly, his parents believe—of a heinous crime.
But Doyle is no detective. He’s about to give up and return to London when out of the evening mist steps Sherlock Holmes to confront his creator/murderer. Is Holmes a hallucination? Does he truly exist on some spectral plane? Either way the sleuth is angry about his supposed demise. “I’m at the zenith of my powers,” he exclaims to Doyle. “Who are you to curtail the chronicles of Sherlock Holmes?”
Eventually the detective agrees to assist Doyle with his investigation. Is the pris- oner guilty or was there a rush to judgment because of the color of his skin? Once the duo is convinced of the convicted man’s innocence, they set out to find the real culprit. The game’s afoot and there’s no lack of suspects.