Theatre review: Sherlock Holmes

Many of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have been put on the stage over the years, with various degrees of seriousness, but now that the character is fully out of copyright writers have also been free to write the great detective into their own, new adventures. Books, film and TV have done it and now Joel Horwood does it at a theatre whose nearest tube station is, appropriately enough, Baker Street. At least that's the theory behind the play simply titled Sherlock Holmes, which opens the Open Air Theatre's season with the promise of a new mystery. What Horwood actually gives us is a deconstruction of the iconic detective and his place in British culture, a central conceit that's pretty bold and iconoclastic - is just a shame that the way it's actually delivered leaves a lot to be desired.

Taking place early on in Holmes (Joshua James) and Dr Watson's (Jyuddah Jaymes) career, the latter's first book A Study in Scarlet has just come out, and Watson is trying to find a subject for the follow-up but none of the cases he suggests interest his flatmate.

Until the arrival of Mary (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi,) the illegitimate daughter of a late officer and an Indian woman he met while serving in the Empire. Watson instantly falls in love with her, while Holmes is intrigued by the case of her being sent anonymous gifts of priceless jewels, the latest of which comes with a cryptic note. But no sooner has the detective accompanied her to a mysterious meeting than two men are dead, and Mary has found herself in a kangaroo court charged with their murders.

Conan Doyle's stories often dealt with uncovering weird international conspiracies and secret societies, and that's the angle that Horwood takes on, but with a very modern perspective on the history: Debuting near the end of the Victorian era it's the height of the British Empire, and everyone except the title character thinks this is a great thing. But James' nihilistic, depressive Holmes is a man out of his time who can't easily accept that Watson received physical and psychological injuries in a pointless war in Afghanistan, that the mixed-race Mary is casually scapegoated, and that the villain he's trying to foil is escaped slave Tonga (Mervin Noronha) trying to restore Indian treasures that were stolen by the British in the first place.

It leaves me in the odd position of admiring the show in retrospect but really not enjoying it at the time. A lot of the problem comes from the combination of a convoluted plot and Sean Holmes' frenetic production, which doesn't leave much time for us to actually catch up to what the hell is going on. James and Jaymes are constantly rattling off a list of unconnected cases which have turned out to be incredibly connected, and once you realise everyone's far too busy clambering around the scaffolding of Grace Smart's set to properly explain the plot it's easy to get disengaged.

The tone is also all over the place - this is clearly the kind of show that will hope to grab a big family audience (and the venue was packed tonight, although almost entirely with adults,) and there's a couple of great action scenes including Holmes and Tonga's final confrontation on the gangway behind the audience. But the swearing and focus on Holmes' drug addiction are at odds with the child-friendly energy of the action, let alone a subplot about escaped zoo animals that means there's always someone hovering around the back of the stage in a panda mask. And for a show that's got the frantic energy of a comedy, it rarely contains an actual joke.

There are appearances by fan-favourite characters like Lestrade (Will Brown,) Mycroft Holmes (Patrick Warner) and Marcia Lecky's incredibly blunt Mrs Hudson, but the characterisation of the central pair always seems a bit off. This too turns out to be deliberate, as Watson's books about Holmes will sanitize him and turn the sharpest skeptic of Victorian England into its biggest icon. But once again this explanation comes too late, at the end of a show whose genuinely disruptive and clever ideas have been a bit too well-hidden in the guise of overcomplicated plots, askew character takes and heavy-handed takes on Empire.

Sherlock Holmes by Joel Horwood, based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, is booking until the 6th of June at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.