The biggest issue I take is the idea that Irene Adler is set up as this powerful intellect and a remarkable, mold-breaking woman of considerable personal independence... and yet she bounces from man to man within a very short span of time. I guess you could say that allowing herself romantic freedom is a sign of that independence-- which is how I chose to interpret it in my performance --but it all happens so quickly that it reduces the value of her affection, I think, for it to change and move so quickly. Also it reduces her personal value to that of a romantic conquest for the male characters around her. It's not the most feminist portrayal of a character who is supposed to represent the true value women can have.
But okay, I do get that the way the author Stephen Dietz mashed the stories together, it's kind of necessary for the three romantic connections to exist in order for that story to happen. Two are actually from A Scandal in Bohemia, and then he wanted to connect her with Sherlock Holmes. Fair enough, if that's the direction he has to go in. But there's a big problem even in that. Irene is presented as almost as smart as Holmes-- she's able to see through his disguise and thwart his scheme. But then this small-time con man James Larabee is able to so completely pull the wool over his eyes as to convince her he's a gentleman, and make her fall in love with him? I don't buy it. I don't buy that he could trick her when a much more formidable man could not, and I also don't buy that she would go for him. I mean, I know that contrary to popular literary portrayal, love is not logical, you do not get Love to be vended in exchange for ten tokens of Worthiness, but I still don't think Larabee-- who is portrayed later in the play as something of a chump --could sufficiently appeal to her to make her want to spend her life with him.
So how to fix that? How to keep that structure while making it more believable that it could happen that way at all? I pondered this when I couldn't sleep last Wednesday night after a conversation with Chris, our gallant Sherlock Holmes, and I think I know what I would do. I would move the Larabee character out of the position of conning Irene and put Moriarty in his place. I would make Moriarty the one who took on the persona of Godfrey Norton in order to charm Irene and get the photograph from her.
I bet that idea surprises some of you. But hear me out. I swear it's not because of my slight crush on the actor playing him. ;-) Despite the fact that Moriarty appears (barely) in like two stories, he is at least stated to be Holmes' arch nemesis, as formidable a criminal as Holmes is a detective. In this play in particular, Holmes and Moriarty are very much set up as two sides of the same coin. I would believe that, if a man like Sherlock Holmes would attract Irene, a man as similar to him as James Moriarty is would make sense to also win her heart. That consistency in there makes Irene's string of romantic entanglements a little less unbelievable to me. Also, by making the two of them literally romantic rivals in that they are both serious contenders for the same remarkable woman's affection, the dichotomy between them is strongly underscored.
Also, I like the idea that you could have Holmes trying to figure out where Moriarty is in all this, how he has the intelligence he has and how he has managed to gather data on Holmes's own involvement. It would make for a pretty cool reveal when he learns that it's all because Moriarty is right there in the thick of it the whole time, aware of Irene's activity because he is seeing it with his own eyes, even influencing it because of the hold he's gotten over her. Keep in mind, Holmes and Moriarty have never actually met, so they wouldn't know each other by sight, so the audience could even see Moriarty posing as Norton and never realize who he is until he dramatically reveals it.
The one thing you would lose in this schema is the admittedly pretty cool idea that Moriarty never directly involves himself in his criminal activities, which is what makes him so difficult to catch and convict. That is a one of the few things you can genuinely point to in what little literature exists on him that is an intrinsic part of his character. But I would sacrifice that just this one time in trade for all the other cool things that arise from placing Moriarty in that role.
It would change a lot about the rest of the show, for certain. I would probably cut the character of Madge the maid and just have Larabee and Prince as Moriarty's henchmen. Making the overall scheme work again would necessitate some rewriting. But I like the idea that once his identity is revealed, Moriarty can mock Holmes for having won the woman that Holmes has come to love, and taunt Irene for her womanish weakness at being so easily taken in. It makes things more personal, and more believable given the nature of the characters.
Ah, well. It's kind of a pointless exercise. But it has certainly preoccupied me. And given the fact that I'm trying to write a reasonable Holmesian mystery adventure in Mrs. Hawking, this could be useful for me. I still need to work out exactly what's going on in that show. I just need to not turn Mrs. Hawking into a rewrite of Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure.
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