When: 7 p.m., Jan. 17 (6 p.m., pre-show talk with actors)
Where: James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts Mainstage Theatre, College of Lake County, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake
Tickets: $13-$41
Information: 847-543-2300; www.jlcenter.clcillinois.edu
When Aquila Theatre brings “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” to the James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts in Grayslake on Jan. 17, the audience will see stories of the legendary detective – as a female.
“So far, the audience has really been very accepting of it,” said Gus Jacobson, the theater’s company manager. “We were expecting some resistance in certain communities – but so far we’ve had great responses from our audience.”
Jackie Schram, who is portraying Holmes, said the concept of casting the iconic sleuth as a female “came from the forward-thinking mindset of our director, Desiree Sanchez.
“She got the idea when she was doing research for creating the adaptation, and while watching an old Sherlock Holmes film, her 10-year-old daughter asked, ‘Could Sherlock be a girl?'”
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Schram, who trained at The New School for Drama in New York, said, “In 2016, it is so important for us to be able to look at telling stories, both on stage and elsewhere, and not be limited by gender.”
Schram said in some productions gender roles are flipped, for example, a woman might play Hamlet. But the female actor still has to play that character as a man, Schram said. In Aquila Theatre’s production, Schram gets to play Holmes as a woman.
“I just get to play my Sherlock: the smartest woman in the room, who wears pants because they are better suited to being a consulting detective, and who lives for solving problems,” she said.
“I think the most interesting aspect about seeing this iconic character as a woman, is Sherlock’s relationship to other people, and especially, to other women. In the stories, Watson, being the narrator, often talks of Sherlock’s seeming lack of compassion, and indeed, Sherlock even says of himself, ‘I am not often eloquent. I use my head, not my heart.'”
For the production, the theater has taken three of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories, “The Adventure of the Copper Beaches,” “The Adventure of the Yellow Mask,” “Irene Adler and the King of Bohemia,” and woven them into a seamless script, Jacobson said.
The original cast included a different female actor, he said.
Dr. Watson, Holmes’ sidekick, will be played by a male actor, Peter Groom. He and Schram “are so well bonded and connected to each other,” Jacobson said.
“They instinctively know how to complement one another on stage. I think audiences are really going to appreciate the professional chemistry between Sherlock and Watson.”
Founded in 1991, Aquila Theatre strives to bring classical theater to a large audience, Jacobson said. It started in London, moved to New York and now tours regularly, doing single performances at various venues nationwide, affording the chance to bring classical theater to many more places, Jacobson said.
At College of Lake County before the show, the audience can join a 6 p.m. pre-production talk.
“That will be a good opportunity for the audience to talk to the actors about the process of acting, what life on the road is like,” Jacobson said. “The audience usually has a whole range of questions.”
Perhaps one of them will be, can Sherlock Holmes be a female?
Schram said, “If you are bringing a little girl, you can tell her, ‘Yes, Sherlock can be a girl.'”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the baiduhai.