The game is… coming to Bristol! We caught up with cast members Tom Tokley and Billy Morton of Adventures of the Improvised Sherlock Holmes, coming to Bristol Improv Theatre 11th-12th September. Read on to find out what makes Sherlock Holmes so well-suited to improv, and how to deduce the answers to a crime when it hasn’t actually been decided yet…
What is it about Sherlock Holmes that says ‘improv’?
Tom Tokley: Improv is all about reacting/adapting to new circumstance and that’s exactly how Sherlock solves his cases!
Billy Morton: The Sherlock Holmes stories are perfect for improv as there is so much source material to draw on, and the originals are episodic; this means in the show we can create whole new adventures that feel like they could slot in amongst the canon (albeit usually a lot sillier!).
Have you had a particular favourite show, prompt, or moment onstage?
TT: 300 Polish schoolchildren providing a highly realistic seagull chorus for a seaside mystery.
BM: This year at the Edinburgh Fringe, my favourite shows included “The Underwater Nuptial”, wherein there was a wedding on a submarine which turned out to be a plot by a German spy; “The Dead Sheep”, wherein a murder of a sheep turned out to be the murder of a man dressed up as a sheep; and “The Flying Hat”, wherein a criminal attempted to assassinate Holmes, and Watson saved him by throwing a diamond-tipped deerstalker.
Do you have a favourite original Sherlock story?
BM: My personal favourite is The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, as we see Holmes and Watson do a bit of crime for themselves, and the conclusion of the story tells us a lot about Holmes’ character.
TT: The Hound of the Baskervilles; particularly now that the nights are drawing in!
How do you come up with brilliant deductions when you haven’t actually decided what’s happened yet?
TT: A leap of faith; trusting that our co-cast members will take our ideas and run with them until they make sense!
BM: That’s why it works really: no-one on stage is set on what the solution to the mystery will be, so when Sherlock makes a genius deduction, the other characters go along with it. No wrong answers here! That’s not to say it’s easy; there are often lots of loose ends we try and tie up to varying degrees of success, but on the whole we end up with some kind of satisfying conclusion. Holmes always solves the mystery in the end!
Do you all play the same broad ‘characters’ each time, or do you choose new character tropes and stakes live onstage?
BM: Of course, in every story we have a Holmes and a Watson (we each take turns playing these roles), and we occasionally see characters from the wider canon (Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft, and even Moriarty), but beyond that the characters are entirely new each time. We take a lot of inspiration from the suggestion we get from the audience (which usually provides us with a logical setting), and we create a network of interconnected characters in the world of Victorian England we see in the Holmes stories. Trying to hold on to any preconceived notions of characters going in would only make it harder; we’re all completely open to wherever the story will take us.
TT: We each take turns playing the core roles of Holmes and Watson but as we meet lots of original characters over the course of a show (and as we’re only a cast of three) there’s always opportunities for multiple roles. Of course, late 19th and early 20th century archetypes will always pop up, but we love meeting new characters and exploring new silly tropes and behaviours as much as our audiences do!
If Sherlock Holmes came to the show, what do you think he’d say?
TT: “When an improviser does go wrong, they are the first of criminals. They have the nerve and they have the knowledge.” – a (slightly edited) quotation from The Adventure of the Speckled Band.
BM: “My dear Watson, I deduce this to be the finest way to spend an evening in Bristol since I solved that murder as a lad at the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I say, it’s on again tomorrow. Why don’t we watch it again? It’s different every time, after all. Come, Watson: the game’s afoot!”
You can catch Adventures of the Improvised Sherlock Holmes at Bristol Improv Theatre, 11th and 12th September.
