Ken Ludwig's

BASKERVILLE: A SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY

Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery was originally produced by McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, NJ Emily Mann, Artistic Director; Timothy J. Shields, Managing Director and Arena Stage, Washington, DC Molly Smith, Artistic Director, Edgar Dobie, Executive Producer

Ken Ludwig

Ken Ludwig may well be the most performed playwright of his generation. He has had six productions on Broadway and eight in London’s West End. His 34 plays and musicals are staged around the world and throughout the United States every night of the year. They have been produced in over 20 languages in more than 30 countries, and many have become standards of the American repertoire.

His first play, Lend Me a Tenor, won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century” by The Washington Post. Crazy For You was on Broadway for five years, on the West End for three, and won the Tony and Olivier Awards for Best Musical. It has been revived twice in London, most recently in 2023. His play Death on the Nile is currently on a 26-city tour of the UK and Ireland.

In addition, he has won the Edwin Forrest Award for Contributions to the American Theatre, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Helen Hayes Awards, the Charles MacArthur Award, and the Edgar Award for Best Mystery of the Year. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award for writing the 1990 Kennedy Center Honors. His other plays include Moon Over Buffalo; Leading Ladies; Baskerville; Sherwood; Twentieth Century; Dear Jack, Dear Louise; A Fox on the Fairway; A Comedy of Tenors; The Game’s Afoot and Shakespeare in Hollywood. They have starred, among others, Alec Baldwin, Carol Burnett, Tony Shaloub, Joan Collins, Kristen Bell and Henry Goodman.

His book How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, published by Penguin Random House, has been a bestseller and has recently been released in a new, expanded edition. It won the Falstaff Award for Best Shakespeare Book of the Year. He studied music with Leonard Bernstein at Harvard University. His essays on theatre are published in the Yale Review, and he gives the Annual Ken Ludwig Playwriting Scholarship at the American College Theatre Festival. He holds a lifetime appointment to the Council of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

His first opera, Tenor Overboard, opened at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2022. His most recent world premieres were Moriarty and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, and his newest plays and musicals include Pride and Prejudice Part 2: Napoleon at Pemberley; Adults at Play; Beginner’s Luck with a score by George and Ira Gershwin; and Easter Parade with a score by Irving Berlin.

He has been commissioned to write plays by the Agatha Christie Estate, the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Old Globe Theatre, and the Bristol Old Vic.

For more information visit www.KenLudwig.com.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was best known for his four novels and 56 short stories about the fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr Watson, milestones in crime fiction. He wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles shortly after returning to his home from South Africa, where he had worked as a volunteer physician during the Second Boer War.

He had not written about Sherlock Holmes in eight years, having killed off the character in the 1893 story "The Final Problem". Although The Hound of the Baskervilles is set before the latter events, two years later Doyle brought Holmes back for good, explaining that the character Holmes had faked his own death. Originally, Doyle had been tired of his creation, but the popularity of the hound story led to the revival of Holmes. Originally serialized in The Strand Magazine in 1901-1902, the story is set largely in Dartmoor, Devon on England’s western country. The story of the hound has been linked to several possible origin stories, each being derived from stories of black devil hounds in Devon, Wales and various rural English areas.

One of the most popular Sherlock Holmes stories, the Hound has been made into over two dozen movies, multiple radio shows, and half dozen stage plays. The story has also been made into multiple pod-casts and video games. Ken Ludwig authored the Baskerville adaption in 2015 after having adapting several other Holmes’ stories for the stage.