Cleveland Play House producing prolific Ken Ludwig’s ‘Moriarty’

Popular playwright talks about his second ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and more

By JOHN BENSON for The News Herald

A recent phone call to Ken Ludwig found the award-winning playwright in his happy place.

“The birds are out,” said Ludwig, calling from Washington, D.C. home. “I’m on a deck sitting in beautiful weather, so I have my pencil and pad of paper. I’m scribbling way, which is just my happiest time ever.

“That’s what I like. I have two new plays I’m working on, but I’m always working on new plays.”

Ludwig’s four-decades-long resume includes 32 plays and musicals — six appearing on Broadway, seven in London’s West End — with many becoming a fixture of the American repertoire.

The latest is “Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Adventure,” which makes its world premiere in a Cleveland Play House production running April 29 through May 21 at Playhouse Square’s Allen Theatre.

It’s the case of revolving around a king’s stolen letters. The investigation finds world-renowned sleuths Holmes and Watson delving into an international mystery filled with spies, blackmail, and intrigue.

The pair join up with American actress Irene Adler to take down cunning criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty and his network of devious henchmen.

In true Ludwig fashion, five actors portray more than 40 roles in his latest Holmes adventure.

“Holmes and Watson are mythic,” he said. “Somehow Arthur Conan Doyle just touched on at the right moment historically when the detective story was just emerging.

“Look now how much people like mysteries. They’ve taken over our whole literature, and that was the beginning of it. Holmes is ingenious yet a little cold. He’s mysterious, but he’s good-hearted. And Watson is his narrator. They’re like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.”

The one thing the playwright actively worked against when writing his second Sherlock Holmes production — the first being 2015’s “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery” — was avoiding the popular character’s clichéd pipe and dressing gown.

“You have to strip them of all that and make them real so that we care about them,” he said.

“That’s what I tried to do in both ‘Baskerville’ and this one where — I don’t want to give too much away but — he falls in love. That’s not the Holmes we’re used to seeing.”

When discussing Ludwig’s works, the word that comes to mind is prolific.

His 2020 play “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” won the Charles MacArthur Award for Best New Play of the Year.

And last year he enjoyed premieres of new works “Lend Me a Soprano” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” His stage version of the latter, written at the request of the Agatha Christie Estate, had its European premiere at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

Now, in addition to “Moriarty” opening at Cleveland Play House, there are three more new productions — “Pride and Prejudice, Part 2: Napoleon at Pemberley,” “Lady Molly of Scotland Yard” and “Holmes and Watson, Criminals at Large” — in the pipeline.

Retirement doesn’t seem to be anywhere in Ludwig’s plans.

“Nope, can’t think of anything I’d like less,” he said. “I’m sitting right here now with two new plays I’m excited about writing.

“It’s what I do. It’s my profession, and I don’t take that lightly. Writing is not a hobby for me. It’s how I make my living. I take it very seriously.”