Review: A SHERLOCK CAROL, Marylebone Theatre

Having started life 3500 miles away off-Broadway, A Sherlock Carol pitches up no more than 350 yards from the detective's flat at 221b Baker Street. But this is no happy homecoming for our hero, Sherlock Holmes, stuck in an existential crisis with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, dead at the Reichenbach Falls, and increasingly disillusioned with his sleuthing profession. Having even ostracised Doctor Watson, he's starting to hallucinate as the depression grips.

But he's seduced back into the game by news of the death of that great late Victorian benefactor, Ebenezer Scrooge, and all his old tricks are soon being exercised to spring the wrongfully arrested and convict the real criminals - not without ol' Ebenezer himself (who knows the power of such ghostly visitations) showing him visions of the past, the present and the future.

If that sounds a bit Flashman Papers, a bit too clever for its own good, a bit Marvel Comic Universe mash up, well, it is. But Mark Shanahan's script stays just the right side of smarmy and sentimental, the performances strike the right note (serious but aware that it's all hokum) and it's all so handsomely designed by Anna Louizos and Linda Cho that we're soon lulled into a charitable mood and forgive the conceit.

The cast all have a lot of fun. Ben Caplan has to wait longer than most, carrying Holmes' angst around before he can triumphantly turn full Basil Rathbone in the denouement. The rest of the ensemble deliver a range of turns, Richard James rolling out his inner pantomime dame as Scrooge's ageing retainer and Rosie Armstrong vamping it up as Holmes' "will she, won't she?" would-be paramour, Irene Adler. There's a nice London debut for Gemma Laurie who appears to have wandered in from Oliver!, an excellent introduction and super late joke from Kammy Darweish as Scrooge and Damian Lynch delighfully brings us up to date on the now Doctor "Tiny" Tim Crachit.

It helps to know the characters and one or two incidents from A Christmas Carol (but, frankly, who doesn't?) to get all the jokes, but there's plenty for everyone in a show that isn't shy of wearing its literary provenance on its sleeve, but entertains from start to finish, with a catchphrase here, a knowing wink there and a decent whodunnit plot to hold it all together.

A Sherlock Christmas is at the Marylebone Theatre until 7 January

Photo Credit: Danny Kaan

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