Review of Filament Theatre's Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Portage Park

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Portage Park. It was by Jessica Wright Buha and it was directed by Christian Libonati. It was like a game where you have to solve the mystery of who stole this young baseball player's special box. Basically there are a bunch of elaborate scenes throughout the neighborhood and you sneak around with a group of people and Sherlock and Watson gathering clues. There are a bunch of different groups and you follow different suspects and then meet up to put all your clues together and try to figure out who the culprit was. Everyone gets their own Sherlock and Watson from a duplicator, that turned out to be very useful during the course of the play. I was in the red group and my Sherlock and Watson were Alex Ireys and Kristina Loy. But first there are a Sherlock and Watson who introduce you to the story: Alejandro Tey and Nathan Drackett. I had a lot of fun at this show. I think that adults could still have fun at it, but you'd have more fun if you went with a kid. I liked the free aspect to it where you could do whatever you wanted as long as you stayed with the group. It is fun to go into everyday places and have people stare at you because you are being guided around by Sherlock Holmes!

I might have been the oldest kid in my group, but it was still really fun and some of the kids were hilarious. There was one little kid who seemed to be having a great time. And he said some very hilarious things. We found a seed that looked like an avocado seed, and this one little kid said "That's what avocados are made out of!" and everybody could not stop laughing because it was adorable. All the kids were really involved in the story. They all really seemed like they wanted to participate. I thought a lot of the theories people had were really awesome. I liked how you didn't solve the entire mystery in your group but you had to come all together and solve it that way as a larger group. I was the photographer for my group and shared clues on social media with the other groups and I thought that was super fun.

I loved my Sherlock and Watson. They were super fun and funny and they listened to every single kid's thoughts and their analysis. Sometimes they would put a searching group together and I went on one with Red Watson where we found this guy talking on his phone and he was talking about a secret plan of some sort. And then another guy walked by and it was kind of hard to know if he was doing the show or not. It was disorienting but in a fun way. Both Sherlock and Watson were really good at listening to people. When somebody would say that they found a place, Sherlock and Watson would not just ignore it. They would take that to mind and then go to it. I think that both of them were great improvisers and they would make up something funny or clever really quickly.

People who would like this show are people who like interactive theater, solving mysteries, and avocado seeds. I think kids and their parents should go see this show. It was a super fun experience and I really enjoyed doing it. I think it would be cool if one of the groups was aimed at adults so they had a more complicated course you could do; that would have been a lot of fun to try. The only reason this is such a short review is that I didn't want to give anything really away. It would be very hard to avoid that with a play where the entire plot is to figure out the plot!

Photos:Dominick Maino