BENDING THE WILLOW: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes by Davies David Stuart

Author:Davies, David Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

Seven

The Secret of Sherlock Holmes

Seven

The Secret of Sherlock Holmes

I FIRST HEARD OF THE PLAY The Secret of Sherlock Holmes when Jeremy Brett mentioned it to me in passing while we talked in his location caravan in Liverpool in March 1988. At this time I was not used to the typical flamboyant Brettism which rolled effortlessly off the tongue, presenting an idea that was convincing, whole, real, and assured, when in reality it was an idea that had been newly minted in that fertile mind of his. With Jeremy, when the wind was in the right direction, possibilities became certainties, thoughts became realities, and wishes were the truth. It was an endearing quality.

Here’s what he told me on that occasion about the drama that eventually became The Secret of Sherlock Holmes:

‘In January next year I open in a Holmes play in Australia. It’s a three-hander, me, Watson, and a narrator. I’m hoping to persuade Edward Hardwicke, my Granada Watson, to play the good doctor—there is none better. The plan is to take the play across the States and then bring it into London in the middle of next year.’

Most of that statement bore little relation to the reality of the matter. It was off the top of his head. It pleased him to tell me and it pleased me to hear it—and that pleased him, too. There were no plans for Australia or America, but there was a play—which was still being shaped as we spoke. The writer was Jeremy Paul, who had scripted several of the more successful television episodes, notably ‘The Musgrave Ritual’, which won an award in America. Paul had based the play to some extent on taped discussions he’d had with Jeremy Brett, along with his own ideas stimulated by his long-time fascination with Conan Doyle’s hero. I will let Jeremy Paul take up the tale of the play’s genesis:

‘Jeremy and I went back a long way. The first time I met him was when Pat Garwood, my wife, was in a production of Beauty and the Beast that the BBC did way back in the ’sixties. Jeremy played the prince and the beast and was wonderful. Pat and Jeremy struck up a kind of friendship and he came back to our house and played ping-pong late into the night on a number of occasions. We became friends before we worked together. Then I adapted an H. E. Bates story, “An Aspidistra in Babylon”, for a Granada series called Country Matters and Jeremy played the lead—a kind of young lieutenant in barracks at Dover who seduces the local girl and then abandons her. This was in the early ’seventies. Working on this production secured our friendship, I guess. Although he did quite a lot of work in America during the ’seventies, we did meet from time to time. Actually we met up in the States at one point.’

Paul believes that, because of their friendship, it was Jeremy who put forward his name as a writer on the Granada Holmes series.

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