MYSTERIOUS
CIRCUMSTANCES by Carol Kaufman Segal
Mysterious
Circumstance, written by Michael Mitnick, is making its world premiere at
the Geffen Playhouse, directed by Matt Shakman. It explores the death of Richard Lancelyn
Green (Alan Tudyk) the most well-known scholar and lecturer of Sherlock Holmes. Green’s life was so absorbed in Sherlock
Holmes that he was considered a fanatic.
The play
opens with the mysterious death of Green in his library where he had a very
large collection of valuable Sherlock Holmes Books. Green had spent years searching for Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle’s missing papers and had come close to discovering his
secrets when he found a mysterious box which was thought to be cursed. Did someone murder Green, or did he commit
suicide? Perhaps only Sherlock Holmes
could answer this question!
Following
that scene forward, I found the play very difficult to follow. It becomes three stories being acted out and
all three are interspersed with one another.
While one story is all about Richard Lancelyn Green (Alyn Tudyk),
another is about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Austin Durant) and his wife (Helen
Sadler), and yet another is a take-off of Sherlock Holmes (Tudyk), and Watson (Monsef)
who are attempting to solve the mystery of Green’s death.
Each actor becomes
another character as the stories go back and forth, making it difficult to keep
up and to know what is happening. Alyn
Tudyk plays both Green and Sherlock Holmes, Austin Durant (Conan Doyle and others),
Ramiz Monsef (Watson and others), Hugo Armstrong (The American and others) John
Bobek (Chester and others), Leo Marks (Smith and others), and Helen Sadler
(Touie and others). Though I was
confused throughout a great deal of this play, I found the actors performances
excellent and the staging outstanding. 
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