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Twin Cities playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has long been a devotee of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

 
But he never imagined that he would have a chance to play the brilliant detective on stage.

 
That's exactly what he had to do, however, when Steve Hendrickson, who was cast in the title role in "Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders" at the Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, fell ill just before opening night.

 
Director Peter Moore filled in for a couple of shows, a cunningly disguised script in his hand. But with commitments elsewhere, Moore needed someone else to step in.

 
Having written the script, Hatcher clearly understood the character. So the playwright shaved his trademark beard and reluctantly donned Holmes' deerstalker hat, even though he knew the role portrayed by countless actors would be a challenge.

 
"To do it on stage, you are fighting a lot of images," he said. "You're fighting Steve Hendrickson. You are fighting [Benedict] Cumberbatch, [Ian] McKellen, Basil Rathbone, [William] Gillette. So when I come on stage it's like, 'Oh look! It's Holmes' chubby brother!'"

 
Based on the novel by Minnesota writer Larry Millett, "Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Castle Murders" takes the detective from Victorian London to St. Paul in the depths of winter. It's a fast-paced show that mixes laughs with tension.


On stage, Hatcher felt more of the latter.

 
"It's like going in on D-Day: You walk through the curtains, the bullets start flying immediately," he said. "In a play like this so much of it is about exit, enter, put on the cape. Take off the deerstalker. Pick up the gun. Take the syringe! Walk over here. Turn left. Now turn around. Thinking about things like performance and style and persona, that comes way down the line."


 
Hatcher said he only exited on the wrong side of the stage a couple of times. He also got all the laughs he had written.

 
Hendrickson has now returned to the production, but Hatcher remains on standby just in case.


 
Meanwhile, Hatcher also is waiting to see how his other script on Sherlock Holmes plays on the big screen.


 
The film "Mr. Holmes," starring Sir Ian McKellen, opens Friday in movie theaters around the country. It presents Sherlock Holmes at 93, living in a small English village decades after a disturbing case caused him to retire. Although the elderly detective has a picture of a woman involved in the case, he can't remember the details.


 
"You know, a few years ago I could have told you everything about the woman in that photograph," Holmes says in the film. "Certainly I'd recall what had become of her, whether she was victim or culprit. But that night, I couldn't remember any of it."


 
"It's about a man who remembers the pain but doesn't remember why he has the pain," Hatcher said. "And if you are that kind of thinking machine, it drives you bats!"

 
The production was delayed for a couple of years until McKellen was available. Hatcher said the theatrical intelligence and sensibility McKellen brought to the role was invaluable.

 
He spent a week on set watching the filming.


 
"What was great was you would meet McKellen," Hatcher said, recalling how the actor would greet him by saying, "Oh, Mr. Hatcher, how good to see you!"


 
"And I thought, 'Well, he's being awfully decorous ... this gay icon,'" Hatcher said. "But he is kind of a method actor. He keeps in character."

 
The playwright said both the play and the film fit easily within the Holmes canon, but they are very different. "Mr. Holmes" is a mystery, but also a meditation on aging and the importance of friends. "Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders" is much more of a romp.


 
Anyone who has the impression that Hatcher has had enough of Holmes would be wrong. He said a backstage conversation about having so many people play the detective in one show has spurred an idea: What if Holmes disappeared and then his friend Dr. John Watson stumbled across an asylum where several men claim to be the detective?


 
His working title might be "The case of the six Sherlocks" or "The five mad Holmes?"

 
"It could be something that chugs out in a couple of years," Hatcher said. "I don't think I have seen it before, which is usually the prerequisite for sitting down to type!"

Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders

 Park Square Theatre, 20 W. 7th Place, St. Paul

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Twin Cities playwright Jeffrey Hatcher wrote "Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders." He also found himself cast temporarily as the detective in the Park Square Theatre production.

Playwright brings Sherlock Holmes to life, on page and stage

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