{"id":19319,"date":"2018-04-14T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T06:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=19319"},"modified":"2018-04-12T14:35:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T20:35:54","slug":"audio-drama-review-sherlock-holmes-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/audio-drama-review-sherlock-holmes-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Audio Drama Review: Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=1844354547&amp;asins=1844354547&amp;linkId=3D3XFUS5MLS4V7TG&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\">&amp;amp;lt;br \/&amp;amp;gt; <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Note: This review was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/act-review\/\">previously posted<\/a> in July 2015 but is being reposted. Big Finish is having a sale. The download version can be purchased for 0.99 (in your local currency). You can access the sale by clicking <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bigfinish.com\/offers\/v\/99for99returns\">here<\/a> and using the password &#8220;redballoons&#8221; before 5\/1\/2018.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Last Act\u00a0<\/em><em>brings Roger <\/em>Llewellyn\u2019s long-running Sherlock Holmes one-man play to audio. The story finds a somber Holmes reflecting on his life and career after Watson\u2019s funeral. It\u2019s a heartbreaking performance as Holmes reflects on his friend and his career. \u201cYou never appreciate the best things, the best people, until they\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not every moment is somber. There are humorous moments as Holmes reflects on one of his friend\u2019s oddities or on Lestrade\u2019s unremarkable career that saw him never rise above Inspector.<\/p>\n<p>The play covers a variety of ground. From \u201cThe Abbey Grange\u201d to \u201cThe Speckled Band,\u201d \u201cThe Final Problem,\u201d \u201cThe Empty House,\u201d and <em>The Hound of the Baskervilles<\/em> and many more, Holmes offers his reflections on his cases and it\u2019s a Tour de Force performance.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed the second half far less as it offered insights into Holmes\u2019 dark secrets, including his little-discussed childhood. On one hand, this explained Holmes being merciful in one particular case. On the other, there\u2019s a certain modern conceit that tries to explain everything anyone does as a result of childhood trauma. This can be seen in superhero fiction where so many characters\u2019 origins are being rewritten to include trauma. It becomes monotonous in fiction when no one ever does anything good, noble, or heroic unless a parent was killed or was abusive, or some other trauma occurred to explain it.<\/p>\n<p>I also didn\u2019t like the way Holmes\u2019 drug use was addressed. In the books, Watson claims to have weaned him\u00a0off cocaine. However, the play insists Holmes\u2019 use continued unknown to Watson and it leads the play\u00a0to a dour place. While some would argue this is more realistic than the books (which removed the cocaine habit as it became socially unacceptable) and it might be clever to undermine audience expectations by moving from downbeat to depressing, but I wasn\u2019t pleasantly surprised by the turn.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the play is well-written even if I have issues with the tone, Llewellyn\u2019s performance as Holmes (and twelve other characters) is pitch-perfect and thoroughly engaging. He captures Holmes as a man trying to come to terms with the greatest loss in his life as a lifetime of emotional restraint begins to ebb away. I only wish the play had a more satisfactory conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 4.25 out of 5.0<\/p>\n<p><em>If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B004U8SET2\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=adamsblog03-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B004U8SET2\">automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&amp;amp;lt;br \/&amp;amp;gt; Note: This review was previously posted in July 2015 but is being reposted. Big Finish is having a sale. The download version can be purchased for 0.99 (in your local currency). You can access the sale by clicking here and using the password &#8220;redballoons&#8221; before 5\/1\/2018. The Last Act\u00a0brings Roger Llewellyn\u2019s long-running Sherlock&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[132,123,27],"tags":[2177,2108,533],"class_list":["post-19319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-drama-review","category-golden-age-article","category-sherlock-holmes","tag-audio-drama-review","tag-favorable-review","tag-mixed-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-51B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19346,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19319\/revisions\/19346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}