The 7/8 Drama Club performed their play, “The Secret Case of Sherlock Holmes” by Craig Sodaro.  This large cast of seventeen students had been rehearsing twice a week after school since the end of February. It was wonderful to see their hard work and talent come together in a day performance for the whole school and an evening performance for  the community on Friday, April 26, 2013.

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Patients at the Freudley Institute discover Watson after he has been chloroformed by the villain.

The play was both a comedy and a mystery rolled into one. A brief plot summary: The play begins in the 1886 English laboratory of H.G. Wells (science fiction author of The Time Machine) where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are hired to look for a manuscript leant to Wells by Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes stories). Holmes and Watson accidentally get transported into the future, present day England, by Wells’ time machine.

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Holmes and Watson discuss the case and discover that the violin is actually a stolen Stradivarius worth millions.

They end up in a mental institution for people suffering from grandiose delusions and meet all sorts of interesting characters, including Queen Victoria, George Washington, two Marilyn Monroes, Count Dracula, Carrie Nation, and Emily Dickinson. A murder happens, which Holmes and Watson must then solve, and then figure out how to get back to the past.

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Dr. Young and her beau, Institute caretaker Eddie Nash, discuss who at the Institute could possibly have committed the murder.
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Watson explains to the patients and the inspectors that the murderer is someone in the room.

Cast

  • Miss Pinchley – Nehali
  • H.G. Wells – Noah S.
  • Voice of Mrs. Hudson – Ellie
  • Sherlock Holmes – Paige
  • Dr. John Watson – Abby
  • Inspector Lestrade – Jade
  • Officer Clark  – Nehali
  • Dr. Sydney Freudley – Sonita
  • Ella Johnson – Emilia
  • Mrs. Cobb Evy – Morgan
  • Eddie Nash –  Takele
  • Ruby Allen – Sophia
  • Irene Adler – Reese
  • Tom Smith – Paul
  • Henry Lee – Noah S.
  • Winifred Brownlow – Ellie
  • Nancy Darling – Lauren
  • Charlotte Hyde-White – Henry
  • Dr. Carla Young – Tessa
  • Mr. Willows – Elena
  • Figure in black – Paul

Students had a lot of fun delving into their fun characters and putting together their costumes. A special thanks goes to FSM parent Anne Lippin for her help in creative costuming as well as to our stage manager, seventh grader John, who was prop master extraordinaire. Music teacher Brad Bradshaw was in charge of set design and created a beautiful set that looked like the group room of a posh rehabilitation facility. Students enjoyed helping paint the set the week of the play.

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To the chagrin and disbelief of Inspector Lestrade and her assistant Officer Clark, Holmes and Watson solve the case – the murderer and thief is Monte Moriarty, who has been masquerading at the Institute as a patient who thinks he’s George Washington.

I am so glad that Friends School of Minnesota offers students this opportunity to get involved with theater through this extracurricular drama club for 7th and 8th graders. Theater was a defining part of my life during adolescence, and it has been such a joyful experience for me to be involved as director of these plays and to watch students blossom through drama.

– Rebecca Slaby
Middle School Humanities Teacher