A Sherlock Carol @ Marylebone Theatre, London
A Christmas-themed mash up of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens/Scrooge — what is not to like?
I loved the idea of this play, but it just didn’t quite gel for me. It wasn’t as funny as it thought it was nor as reverential as a Mark Gatiss Sherlock moment. But the second half was much stronger than the first, so do stick around.
The cast had a lot of energy and covered multiple roles. The goose, the blue carbuncle, jolly Scrooge flashbacks and even ‘the lady’ are crammed in there neatly. The hauntings don’t quite work — Sherlock is haunted by Moriarty and Scrooge, because Scrooge has seemingly been murdered..but by whom? Filling in for a missing Dr Watson, is Dr ‘Tiny’ Tim Cratchit (Damian Lynch). There is also a wrongly accused man, his daughter and a dodgy housekeeper.
Scrooge has suddenly died, a reformed, jolly Christmas loving man. But his murderer didn’t do it, so Sherlock Holmes is summoned to investigate. Sherlock is fairly miserable for most of the play having had his Reichenbach Falls moment — is Moriarty truly dead? His nephew’s daughter is in love with a ne’er do well musician Fezziwig and ostracised by her family as a result (and so she’s working as a dresser for Irene Adler); Scrooge didn’t interfere, and this plot is interwoven with the stolen goose, the hat, a missing blue carbuncle and Scrooge’s death.
Ben Caplan’s Sherlock lacks the charisma and intensity of a Cumberbatch or Brett version; he is troubled rather than moodily intelligent. The women’s costumes are shocking — at one point 1860s crinolines and 1880s vague bustles are on the stage at the same time — what era are we in? (And the candlemaker’s goose owning sister is clearly a time traveller — 1940s or maybe even 1970s?) The men fare better and get proper era appropriate outfits. The carol singing throughout sets the scene and irrepressible pop-up Scrooge is loud (Kammy Darweish)! And that boy in the street that Scrooge sends to buy a goose for the Cratchits — turns out that was Dr Watson in his pre-Doctoring days…
Overall the two themes are well mixed together, but there’s less crime solving than a regular Sherlock — not much of the game’s afoot….It isn’t as funny as perhaps it could be and I think the writers need a rethink — is it reverential (and in which case amp up the literary references) or is it more comedy pantomime — in which case, more jokes? As with everything now a woman played the male Lestrade and the housekeeper was a thinly disguised man — but given that these parts were played for fewer laughs, the pantomime element clashed with the story here and just became distracting. (Although Dr Watson and Mary take the place of Scrooge’s nephew and wife to Sherlock Holmes and this plays out really well).
Leaving out Scrooge’s nephew and reconciled wider family of his sister (apart from the great niece) seemed a mistake as Scrooge was shown as isolated and lonely in his aging and on his death bed — Dickens original work suggests the complete opposite. Overall the show isn’t awful — the stripped down set is really effective (such as Sherlock seeing the doorknocker change into a face), but the tone is really uneven. I’d gone expecting a comedy and to laugh more and came away feeling a bit cheated. It also wasn’t enough of a detective/ghost story mash up to thrill. See the Old Vic’s annual version of A Christmas Carol which gets the tone right — matching modernisation, comedy, music and Dickens’ original really well. If A Sherlock Carol follows suit and decides if it’s a thriller or a comedy, then all will be well — but the second half is definitely the stronger part of the play.
