In ‘Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville,’ six actors play dozens of characters in a high-speed farce.

Toni Tresca and I were both at opening night of the Lone Tree Arts Center production of Baskerville Thursday night. Here’s our take on the show:

Alex Miller: All right, so we are talking about Baskerville at Lone Tree Art Center. This is an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I think was 1902, adapted by Ken Ludwig. It’s a 2015 play. Ken Ludwig is very well known for his farces, and this certainly leans into that territory, wouldn’t you say?

Toni Tresca: Super Ludwig-ian. It absolutely has his madcap style all over it. There are people switching parts all the time. It’s very quick. It’s very zany. It’s a Sherlock Holmes story, yes, but it’s told in a way that’s very different from a lot of other adaptations. It’s not told necessarily from Sherlock Holmes’ point of view. He’s not really even the main character of the show. It’s actually all being told from the viewpoint of Dr. Watson as if he’s writing a novel, which is more akin to how it is in the books. But that’s not traditionally how you see Sherlock Holmes adaptations, film or stage, portrayed.

Alex: Right? So the great Gareth Saxe plays Sherlock Holmes. I thought he really did a great Holmes because Gareth has that really unique, almost sleepy vibe to him in his line delivery. And so it made Sherlock Holmes kind of a little more of a cipher than just this declarative, I-know-everything kind of guy.

Toni: I also really liked that element. I think it allowed his relationship with Watson, who is very much Dr. Watson in this version, to shine. His medical skills are played up, and it’s clear Sherlock has a deep admiration for what Watson is doing. At one point, he jokes that he’s getting so good at detecting, he may even have to pick up doctoring. Dr. Watson in this version is played by Cameron Davis, who local audiences might remember. He was just on stage over at Curious Theater Company in The Case for the Existence of God, in which he was fantastic. In this show, he gets to show a totally different side of himself, that’s a lot more lighthearted. Davis is doing tons of pratfalls in the show; he hits the ground a lot in this show.

Alex: Yeah, he was great. Very fun-to-watch character on stage. Along with Holmes and Watson are four other actors who do all the other parts. So there’s Brian Black, Zayaz Da Camara, Noelia Antweiler and Jamie Molina, who play actors one and two and actresses one and two. They play over 40 roles including everything from, I don’t know, street urchins and cops to …

From left, Zayaz Da Camara, Cameron Davis, Jamie Molina and Gareth Saxe in ‘Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville.’ Photo: Moon Night Photography

Toni: To the actual hound itself. They play Sir Henry, the guy who’s inheriting the place, the butterfly catcher, a typewriter and everyone else in between. Something fun about this mystery is that it’s not set in an urban setting. It’s set out in the moors, a rustic, swamp-like setting, which is an interesting place for a mystery to unfold. How’d you feel about the mystery? Were you able to piece together the clues?

Alex: No, but I’m never very good at that.

Toni: I love a mystery. Mysteries are one of my favorite genres. I love piecing the clues together. That’s my only critique of this adaptation. I found that the red herring, which takes place pretty early on, is not convincing in the slightest. And, given the framing device of having only four playing all the characters, it is pretty easy to pick out who had done it.

Alex: It’s a weird plot.

Toni: Yeah, absolutely. They’re in this small town, there is an urban legend about a kind of magical, mystical dog that attacks people. Some people describe it as more bear-like, some closer to a man. The play opens with the murder of this very rich dude who’s living out in the country, being killed by what appears to be the hound of Baskerville. Holmes and Watson get word of this, so they go out to the country, but Sherlock makes an excuse to leave pretty quickly. He’s got to go investigate the King of Bohemia or something. So, he makes an exit and it’s largely Watson and Sir Henry, who is the heir to this estate, who are out here running around, out in the country, trying to solve the crime. And Sherlock has given Watson the very explicit instruction to stay right by Sir Henry, who is played by Zaya Da Camara. He’s from Texas and is appropriately accented up and he’s got this gun that he waves around all the time.

Alex: He’s very funny — a great comic actor. Matt Zambrano, who’s part of the King Penny Radio Show, directed this. I can’t remember that I’ve seen his name as director for a bigger show like this. So, I don’t know if it’s new for him, but I thought I did a pretty good job managing all the traffic— there’s a lot of moving parts to this one, and I thought he did nice work rounding it up. This is not necessarily a criticism, but an observation that it almost felt like the stage was too big for this show. They had some big set pieces flying in; it was a really spare set and they had some neat stuff just flying in from the wings from above. But I mean, it just seemed like they could have used a smaller playing space.

Toni: Yeah, Lone Tree’s capacity is around 500. It’s a pretty large space for what is essentially an intimate, Complete Works of William Shakespeare take on Sherlock Holmes. However, I think what Kevin Nelson, who is the scenic designer, is able to achieve is pretty remarkable, as his series of set pieces on the fly system makes it seem as if the world keeps collapsing in on itself. I had not seen the fly system used so extensively at Lone Tree or, frankly, any theater venue in quite some time.

Alex: Me neither. Turning to some of the other performances, Brian Black played a couple of pretty important characters.

Toni: Yes, he was Dr. Mortimer, who is the town doctor, whom Sherlock describes as an unambitious man. He’s kind of their connection to the world, and he’s also playing this butterfly catcher who lives out here with a woman whom he says is his sister.

Alex: Noelia Antweiler was also a lot of fun. She was all over the place playing all kinds of different characters. And then Jamie Molina was the other actress who seemed like she really leaned into the cockney street kind of character in a lot of her parts.

Toni: Yeah, she played a lot of little boys and was very funny. Her reactions, I thought, were some of the sharpest among the cast. She’s always very audible and big with her facial expressions. But I actually think my favorite of her characters was when she was playing this housekeeper woman, who is described as something out of Frankenstein. I feel it’s maybe more like a character from Young Frankenstein, because she just felt so much like Frau Blücher. She’s so wooden and intense that you just can’t help but chuckle.

Alex: Right. And so all of these performances, especially from the four swings, were really over the top. The accents were super corny and, you know, everything was big, big, big and silly, silly, silly. Overall, it’s just a super-fast paced comedy that’s a lot of fun to watch and really pretty well done, I’d say overall.

Toni: Yeah, it features some vocal work from a friend of OnStage Colorado, Jeffrey Parker, who has come on the podcast to talk a little bit about accent work. You really see the benefit of having someone like that on your team for a show like this, where there are so many different accents all delivering critical pieces of information. There’s only one character whom you can’t understand, and that’s the joke.

From left, Cameron Davis, Gareth Saxe and Zayaz Da Camara. | Photo: Moon Light Photography

Alex: Yeah. The lighting was really strong. It was by Jon Dunkle and effectively transported you to a myriad of locations. Sound was by Max Silverman, who seems to be everywhere these days, and does a nice job here.

Toni: Yeah, in addition to this play, he just opened a show at both Curious and the Arvada Center. I was talking with Max last night at the show and, allegedly, he gets a little bit of a break between opening this show and his next piece.

Alex: And then the costumes by Sarah Zinn were pretty good. And there were a lot of quick changes. I thought there was a pretty good job of making all those things convertible. And they even made some kind of, they made a few jokes about, you know, like I think one piece, Noelia said, you have no idea, because she had to make a huge quick change.

Toni: That’s right, yeah, she’s going from this full lady attire to a little cockney boy. Watson’s like, ‘What took you so long?’ And then she just dropped the accent, looks right out at the audience and deadpans, ‘You have no idea,’ which was hilarious.

Alex: Yeah, it certainly looked like everybody was having a lot of fun with it. Generally, it’s pretty clean. I mean, I’d say all audiences could check this out.

Toni: There are some innuendos here and there, but I think the play itself is so quick that I would imagine all of those are going to go right over the heads of little ones.

Alex: Right, yeah. So overall, it’s a pretty strong recommendation to check this one out. It’s running at the Lone Tree Art Center through April 13th. So a little bit of a short run, but plenty of opportunity to see it still.

Toni: Yeah, it is a shorter run. This is part of Lone Tree’s renewed commitment to staging its own productions in its space. In 2019, Lone Tree made the decision not to do any more original programming, but then in 2023, it decided to bring in-house shows back. I think it’s been well worth the effort. The theater has done a few exceptional productions, including The Mousetrap, Dreamgirls, Million Dollar Quartet and now Baskerville. I was chatting with Leigh Chandler, who is the executive director of Lone Tree, last night. She was saying that these runs are kind of hard to do. The expense is pretty high, and they only run for two weekends. But I think it’s well worth the effort because they are hiring local Equity actors and crew members to do these spectacular shows. So like you said, I would highly encourage everybody to get out there, see the show and let Lone Tree know that you like its original programming.

Alex: Yeah, especially for all us poor schmucks on the south side that always have to drive, you all the way downtown to see a show. It’s kind of nice to see something a little closer to my stomping grounds here in Highlands Ranch.

Toni: Absolutely, Parker Arts is amazing, but they should not be the only theater that is programming in South Denver.

Alex: All right, well, there it is. Baskerville at Lone Tree.