
Noah Johnson, Tristan Layne Tapscott, and Adam Michael Lewis in “Baskersville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery" at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse -- January 15 through March 8.
Wednesday, January 15, through Saturday, March 8
Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, 1828 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
Hailed by DC Theatre Arts as a "bright, shiny, comic entertainment" that's "full of energy and stamina," the hilarious whodunit Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery makes its area debut at Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse from January 15 through March 8, with five actors playing more than 40 characters in this cheeky Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation.
Audiences should prepare to get their deerstalker caps on, because the play’s afoot in this stage treat by Tony-nominated farceur Ken Ludwig, the Lend Me a Tenor playwright whose Murder on the Orient Express was performed at Circa '21 last winter. In transforming Doyle’s beloved Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles into a murderously funny adventure, Sherlock is again on the case as the male heirs of the Baskerville line are being dispatched one by one. To find their ingenious killer, Holmes and his devoted assistant Watson must brave the desolate moors before a family curse dooms its newest heir. As our intrepid investigators try to escape a dizzying web of clues, deceit, and characters employing silly accents and disguises, they must determine whether a wild hellhound prowls the moors of Devonshire, discovering, in the process, just how far from elementary the truth can be.
Directing Circa '21's first 2025 presentation is venue veteran Corinne Johnson, the former St. Ambrose University theatre professor who also helmed the theatre's 2024 Agatha Christie mystery Murder on the Orient Express, and whose additional area credits have included directing Miracle on 34th Street: The Musical and Disenchanted! for the venue and Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Glass Menagerie for the Mississippi Bend Players. Jeremy Littlejohn serves as Baskerville's production manager, with other members of Johnson's creative team including: stage manager and props designer Kendall McKasson; scenic designer and artist Becky Meissen; costume designer Bradley Robert Jensen; lighting designer Heather Hauskins; sound designer Aaron Randolph III; technical director Richard Baker; sound designer, assistant stage manager, and deck captain Emmett Boedeker; dialect coach Ron May; sound engineer Dylan Dutro; dresser Emma Wahlmann; and producer Dennis Hitchcock.
Portraying peerless detective Sherlock Holmes, and returning to the Circa '21 stage for the first time in almost 15 years, is Adam Michael Lewis, a theatre instructor at Western Illinois University whose previous productions for the dinner theatre have included Empty Nest, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, and On Golden Pond. Watson is portrayed by Noah Johnson, a recent castmate in the venue's presentations of Miracle on 34th Street: The Musical and Junie B. Jones in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells. And enacting more than three dozen roles between them, the Baskerville ensemble is composed of Circa '21 veteran Tristan Layne Tapscott and, in their Quad Cities debuts, Andrew Bower and Gillian Weatherford.
In addition to its 7:30 p.m. public previews on January 15 and 16, Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery runs in Rock Island from January 17 through March 8, with performances on Fridays, Saturdays, and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 5:30 p.m.; and Wednesday afternoons at 1:15 p.m. All shows will be preceded by meals and pre-show entertainment by the theatre's performing wait staff of Circa '21 Bootleggers, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)786-7733 extension 2 and visiting Circa21.com.