Added on October 11, 2013 John-Paul Stephenson

Elementary, my dear Pasquale

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Joe Pasquale is touring the UK with a comedy adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Ha Ha Holmes sees Holmes is trying to locate eponymous hound on the moors, like the original story, first serialised between 1901 and 1902.

The show stars Pasquale as Holmes, with writer Ben Langley as Doctor Watson, and Andrew Fettes playing six other people.

Talking about the play, Pasquale, who rose to fame when he came second in ITV’s New Faces in 1987, says: “It’s a really innovative, really funny play about Holmes’s methods of solving crimes, and audiences will love getting wrapped up in it.”

Although Pasquale has toured many times as a stand-up comedian, and has released several DVDs, he has acted in high profile stage shows in recent years, including The Producers and Spamalot.

Comparing performing stand-up to acting, Pasquale says: “Stand-up is very different, as you can go wherever you like [but] in a play, you have to stick to the script more rigidly.

“What I like about Ha Ha Holmes! is that it incorporates both disciplines. You can go off on a tangent about tortoises, but you have to come back to the script eventually.”

Pasquale says that his favourite moment of the play comes towards the end of the show when he performs the Lionel Richie song “Hello” with Langley as the dog.

“It’s like a cross between Sherlock Holmes, The Muppets and Monty Python.”