Review: Sherlock Holmes, Regents Park Open Air Theatre

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four Sherlock Homes novels, and 56 short stories. There have been hundreds of novels and thousands of short stories written by subsequent authors, as well as around 300 films and over a thousand stage adaptations. So if a new Holmes stage play is in the offing, it had better offer something new.

Sherlock Holmes at the Open Air Theatre starts with a stylised dance sequence suggesting criminal chaos, on a revolving stage framed by a broken proscenium arch. Then it’s off to India where Captain Morstan (Benjamin Harrold) and Sir Charles Sholto (Christopher Akrill) are teaming up with Private Small (Will Brown) – Holmes aficionados will recognise all these names – to escape the Indian Mutiny, by persuading the Empress’s servant Tonga (Mervin Moronha) to share the crown jewels with them. They pledge a vow of allegiance to each other – “He who breaks the sacred vow will be cursed and hunted to his last breath”, Tonga proclaims portentously.

Then suddenly we’re in London 30 years later, witnessing Holmes losing a bare knuckle fight. Bizarrely dressed in a shiny sky blue trousers and waistcoat, he’s played with camp insouciance by Joshua James: he is, as Mrs Hudson (Marcia Lecky) says, “more of an Oscar Wilde type”.

Holmes is bored. His biographer Watson (Jyuddah Jaymes) tries to tempt him with possible cases from the day’s newspaper: a dead civil servant in a locked room, a lost theatre ticket, a dead ex-solider, and escaped animals from London Zoo. Holmes turns them all down as too dull – but of course, all these events will eventually play a part in the story. The zoo episode is curiously referenced by some of the cast wearing animal heads, including a lion drifting past in the background. On a bicycle.

The case begins with the arrival of Morstan’s daughter Mary (Nade Kemp-Sayfi) – Holmes fans take note – with a tale of unsolicited gems, a dead Charles Sholto and that curse popping up from the dead.

The show is presented like a Victorian melodrama, with shouty performances verging on pantomime. The revolving stage sometimes creates the sense of moving from one location to another, sometimes – such as in Holmes’ sitting room – turning for no obvious reason.

The story is cobbled together from half a dozen original Holmes stories, including a boat chase on the Thames, a body falling off the roof of a train, poisoned darts, stolen top-secret government plans, and meanders towards its conclusion via a scattershot array of set pieces.

But the real problem is with the pedestrian, often anachronistic dialogue. “Allo allo allo,” says Inspector Lestrade (Brown), “if it isn’t Tweedledum and Tweedle Dickhead,” before Holmes describes him as “like a pitbull with a child’s leg”. Other characters fare no better: “She’s innocent,” Watson exclaims to an uncharacteristically inept Mycroft (Patrick Warner), “you’re interfering with a tried and trusted system!”.

If we can’t have originality in the plot, then at least we should be able to fall back on the brilliance of Holmes’ deductive skills. But here again, the script falls short. “Look!” he says, recovering from an opium-fuelled torpor, “This clay on your boot, it’s only found at the court house.” And on examining a dead body: “Royal Engineers tattoo… it explains how he blew open the safe.” And quite why a return visit to the opium den should be a cure for a self-inflicted porcupine quill poisoning is anyone’s guess.

There is some fun to be had in this energetic production, but it can’t make up for lazy writing and plotting. One for the Holmes fans? Not if you value the originals.

Writer: Joel Horwood 
Director: Sean Holmes
Composer: Jherek Bischoff
Sound Designer: Elena Peña
Set Designer: Grace Smart
Lighting Designer: Ryan Day

Sherlock Holmes runs at Regents Park Open Air Theatre until 6 June.