Quick, Watson, the Fix

Baker Street is one up on Professor Moriarty--it kills Sherlock Holmes.

This Holmes is a kind of boy's man whose greatest joy is tinkering with his chemistry set. In musical terms, he is a drab, antiseptic, kissproof cousin of Henry Higgins. He has his brain on his brain, and he incessantly makes love to it in Fritz Weaver's croaking brand of talkee-singee--"just a loaf of bread and a cryptogram, this were paradise enow."

Enow is what the show conspicuously lacks. It certainly does not have enow dancing or enow music. The Baker Street Irregulars test the floorboards occasionally and the boards hold. Three ballet boys garrote one of Holmes's trusty lieutenants in an artily choreographed frenzy of mincing violence. From time to time, the orchestra strikes up, but scarcely tunes. Where there's smoke, there's fog, and that is where most of the London atmosphere comes from, except for a rooftop view of the Diamond Jubilee Parade through Trafalgar Square, with tiny Grenadier Guard puppets and the Queen's jeweled coach crossing a slanted backdrop that for one enchanting moment truly fools the eye with a child's dream of pomp.

Baker Street puts Holmes in bogusly dangerous plights as he foils Professor Moriarty's plot to steal the Queen's Jubilee jewels, but it is never spoofy enough to raise a howl or scary enough to raise a hackle. The real danger is an American actress (Inga Swenson), who spurs Holmes's love disinterest. Actress Swenson is so cool that icicles wouldn't melt in her mouth, though words do--it is difficult to know whether she is reading her lines or learning them. Martin Gabel is sepulchrally menacing as Moriarty, but he has a walk-on, duck-off part.

At one point in the evening, the not-so-strangely dispirited Sherlock Holmes reaches for his hypodermic needle. Unfortunately, someone chooses that moment to burst into Holmes's flat, and Baker Street never does get its fix.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.