REVIEW | A Sherlock Carol, Marylebone Theatre

Reviews

2 Dec

Written by Cathie

Disclaimer: We were invited to watch this performance in return for an honest review.

general warnings: haze, flashing lights, moments of darkness and the flooring is quite steep for if people have difficulty walking.

If London were a Christmas tree, almost every show would be a cheerful bauble and half of those would be productions of A Christmas Carol (it is the festive season after all). However, nestled a mere stone’s throw away from 221B Baker Street, in the fabulous Marylebone Theatre, lies the unique A Sherlock Carol.

This show combines two literary powerhouses in the form of Dickens and Doyle and merges their famous stories to create an interesting and fast paced Christmas murder mystery. It is quite a risky move to merge these Victorian classics into one story, yet this production manages to do so with deft elegance and a joyful sense of homage to the originals that we love so dearly. The plot moves forward quickly throughout and contains enough of the original material to feel cozy and familiar, yet throws in enough twists and turns to keep you interested and focused on ‘whodunit’. Many of its lines are lifted straight from the original stories so it’s fun to play a bingo of how many iconic lines you can recognise in new formats.

This ‘dickens of a tale’ has a cast of six, four of whom play a multitude of colourful London characters and two actors who play Holmes and Scrooge. Kammy Darweish’s Scrooge stole the show for me with his joyful and commanding presence. He cheerfully portrays a Scrooge who has already battled his ghostly visitations, won, and is now in a place to pay that favour forward. Ben Caplan’s Sherlock feels much closer to the original book’s version of the character as opposed to the famous ones we know from recent movie and BBC shows. This makes me like the show much more as it feels more genuine to the character. His rapid fire responses to others and quick recitation of the case details make it much more realistic than the slow, stately Christie-style group reveal. Richard James was brilliant as responsible Dr Watson and housekeeper Mrs Dilber and his comedic timing to land every Dickensian pun possible was fabulous., Rosie Armstrong, Jessica Hern, Devesh Kishore all play a multitude of characters and worked fabulously to bring these characters to life in very different styles as the plot situation demands.

The costumes are all gorgeous and encapsulate the characters well. The set is also fabulous at bringing murky Victorian London to life using a lot of haze and flickering lamps. Another strong point to this production is that all profits go towards Centrepoint and the Felix Project, two charities that fight homelessness and food poverty. I definitely think that both Dickens and Doyle, as well as their literary characters, would firmly approve of this Christmas message of hope and good cheer.

Among the many fabulous productions of a Christmas Carol this year, A Sherlock Carol is definitely a wonderful tale that gleefully glitters with winter joy, Victorian smog and genuinely feels like a love letter to a London long past. I have high hopes that this show will become a classic of the Christmas scene and, like Sherlock’s return after the Reichenbach falls, will astound and amaze theatregoers for many years to come.