Sheerluck Jones, or Why D'Gillette Him Off

[1][2][3][4] In 1901 William Gillette brought Sherlock Holmes to the Lyceum Theatre in London where it proved to be a great success.

It was written by Malcolm Watson and Edward La Serre[5] as a "dramatic criticism in four burlesque paragraphs and as many headlines"[6] Each evening it preceded The New Clown by H. M. Paull.

Mr. Gillette's own impressively monotonous style is admirably reproduced by Mr. Clarence Blakiston and the hop-skip-and-jump manner in which Larrabee is played is humorously exaggerated in Scarab... One of the funniest incidents in the burlesque, which from beginning to end is entirely good-humoured, is the opening of the safe with an egg whisk.

The slamming of the doors, the banging on the floor, the rattling noises "heard without", the perpetual pistols of the original, are turned to good account, while very little is made out of the incident of "following the cigar."

With the aid of so clever a musical director as Mr Buccalossi the authors ought to have introduced some real good "numbers" and eccentric dances, without which, coming in as surprises, it is very difficult for any burlesque to achieve genuine success.