Holmes truths

THERE is, of course, a crucial difference between Sherlock as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch and the Hound of the Baskervilles, as performed two Sunday afternoons ago in Cotherstone Village Hall.

On television, two-thirds of the audience haven’t a clue what’s happening.

At Cotherstone, it’s the dog that gets it.

Cotherstone’s a village in Teesdale, a brief stage for the Castle Players.

The village itself has a primary school, shop, two pubs, church, chapel and (a little more improbably) a Friends’ Meeting House where the body of an 18th Century black servant girl is said to have been buried because none other would have her.

Like Conan Doyle’s hell hound, the Players like to get about. This production keeps almost entirely to dales villages, with a single foray into the big city that is All Saints church hall in Darlington.

Written eight years after Holmes’s supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, adapted more than 20 times for films, the Hound is described on posters as “not for the faint hearted”

– like, say, the young offenders’ institution down the road.

Though the programme also supposes it an abridged short story, it was a full length novel, a story of Baskerville Hall, Great Grimpen Mire and a hound that glowed and breathed fire like the last train to Middleton-in-Teesdale.

Conan Doyle ascribed the effect to phosphorous, though Cerberus might have been more appropriate.

Would it be abridge too far?

Thanks to Cumberbatch and Co, the Castle Players had a hard act to follow.

ABOUT 50 have abandoned Sunday lunch to pay £5 for a seat, most persuaded also to buy a couple of strips of raffle tickets. Top prize, inevitably, is a tin of Quality Street (or maybe that’s what held the tickets.) Before the show, several discuss a mystery yet more perplexing: whatever has become of the England cricket team. A two-pipe problem, as the Great Detective might have observed.

Holmes is played by Stephen Bainbridge, an accountant from Barnard Castle. Andrew Stainthopre, who describes himself as an unemployed freelance communications consultant from Staindrop, is an eager and diminutive Dr Watson.

They’d last been in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“You have to try to get inside the mind of the man; there are so many possibilities,” says Stephen.

There’s no hound, of course, only a disembodied wail which sounds a bit like the siren which in former times summoned Barney firemen from their beauty sleep.

Props are minimal, imagination essential. Holmes wears the regulation deer stalker and cape, though his pipe remains unlit.

Whatever hellfire the hound exhales, Cotherstone breathes health and safety.

Chris Best, the co-director, says afterwards that she’s not a great Sherlock Holmes fan, but enjoys the TV version. One of the problems, she adds, is lack of space.

“Some halls have curtains, some haven’t. Some have one exit, some two or three. We really enjoy it, though.”

Occasionally they play it for laughs, if not (as it were) barking mad for it. Whether the audience is meant to find the poor hound’s demise amusing is moot, but they do, anyway.

It ends at 5pm, the Teesdale weather working itself into a frenzy – like Great Grimpen Mire, not fit for man nor beast. We decide against adjourning to the Red Lion for a warmer. It’s Sunday night, there’s something good on the telly.

• The Hound of the Baskervilles is at Newsham Village Hall, near the A66, at 7.30pm on Friday, at All Saints church hall in Darlington at 7.30pm on Saturday and, after several other performances, has its final bow on February 1, 7.30pm at Ingleton Village Hall.