Three helpful pre-curtain facts: First, novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a real-life doctor and criminal-science buff who often assisted in solving actual cases (Victorian gentlemen of status being permitted to interfere in police business). Second, the father of internationally famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes once tried to end the series by killing off his hero—until public pressure persuaded him to resurrect the popular supersleuth. Third, our play's plot is based on these occurrences, and its authors (who gave us the holiday classic, The Christmas Schooner) began work thereon in 1996, little realizing that composer Julie Shannon would die before its completion. So how does a tunesmith jamming with angel-harps since 2012 come to appear on a playbill for, The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes, a world-premiere musical in 2016? A theme invoked by mortal artists throughout history is the concept of legacy—accomplishments enduring beyond the perpetrator's lifetime. Not only does this principle lie at the foundation of Mercury Theater Executive Director Walter Stearns, original bookwriter John Reeger and composer/lyricist Michael Mahler's efforts to bring their late comrade's project to fruition, but finds affirmation in its narrative as well. Our story opens with Sir Arthur under attack by furious readers for "murdering Sherlock Holmes," leading him to take a vacation in the country, only to find the rural citizens embroiled in a local scandal involving a vicar's son accused of fatally abusing several horses and threatening to escalate his sadistic impulses to include humans. The suspect's interracial parents—the vicar is South Asian and therefore, a "Black" in the nomenclature of his time—entreat Doyle to apply his expertise to proving the lad's innocence. Despite Doyle's skepticism regarding paranormal activity, however, his consciousness is haunted by an apparition, equipped with calabash pipe and deerstalker cap, claiming to be none other than Sherlock Holmes himself. Propelled by a score of galloping-tempo, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-style patter songs boasting clever rhymes and intricate phrasing (along with a few marital-romance ballads), creator and creation solve the mystery—which turns out to be rooted in prejudice, though not the kind we anticipated—while acknowledging each other's importance in an often-inexplicable universe. Chicago theater alumnus Warner Crocker directs an ensemble led by Michael Aaron Lindner and Nick Sandys, featuring a company of veteran song-and-dance artists and musicians, who together forge this welcome addition to the venerable genre whose occupants include Sweeney Todd and My Fair Lady. So what are you waiting for—can't you see the game's afoot?
