REVIEW: A SHERLOCK CAROL by Mark Shanahan at Marylebone Theatre 24 Nov - 7 Jan 2024

‘A Christmas cracker of a show’ ★★★★★

Scrooge and Sherlock Holmes – two of the definitive characters of British literature who’ve had more adaptations than most of us have had Christmas dinners and more liberties taken with them (from Cumberbatch to Kermit the Frog and his Muppet mates) than any venerable Victorian should have to bear. And the strength of the pair of them, types created by writers of differing brilliance, is such that they can survive pretty much anything that’s thrown at them. The genius of A Sherlock Carol, at one of London’s newer and very welcome theatres, just a stone’s throw from 221b Baker Street, is in mixing the two of them together.

Here we have a Sherlock (Ben Caplan) returned from the Reichenbach Falls in a brown study (no scarlet in this heart); no longer having the intellectual challenge of the deceased Professor Moriarty with whom to match wits. And when he is thrown, very much against his depressed will, into investigating the death of one Ebeneezer Scrooge (Kammy Darweish), a couple of decades or so after that grumpy old humbug’s conversion into the merriest Christmasser in Christendom, the game’s afoot once more.

This is a Christmas cracker of a show from its opening in fogbound, lamplit, crinoline-clad London Town, the cast of six representing multiple characters brilliantly in a script that crackles with wit and invention and warms the heart from opening song to the final solution of the crime. Sherlock is given glimpses by the ghost of Scrooge into his past and present, and a very dismal future unless he drags himself out of his self-absorbed gloom, and, as with the Dickens’ original, discovers his better self as a result.

The show’s very handsomely mounted – the costumes, set and effects are impeccable. But above all it hits precisely the right tone right from the start – brisk, efficient story-telling, funny without straining to be, and melding Dicken’s very familiar Christmas Carol with a comparatively minor Conan Doyle story (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle) so seamlessly that Mark Shanahan (writer and director) deserves some sort of award.

The production values are also superb – all credit to Anna Louizos and Jess Richardson-Smith especially for scenic design and costume (and apologies to the rest of the crew for absence of space to reprint the programme credits). And while stern, grumpy Caplan and bubbling, hilarious Darweish brilliantly inhabit a superb role each in Holmes and Scrooge respectively, the gigantic ensemble of characters they work with are played with just four actors, multi-tasking and with almost unbelievably quick costume changes in some cases.

Rosie Armstrong’s Irene Adler (for Sherlock, the Woman), Richard James’s Dr Watson and Joe the peddler, and Deveshi Kishore’s Dr Cratchit stand out among the multiple characters they each play. But Jessica Hern’s Inspector Lestrade, again one of her multiple roles, is the scene stealer, a fabulous portrayal of a supremely confident idiotic Scotland Yard bungler.

The storytelling’s confident, well-paced and assured, even as the two very different styles of their originals are brought together. There are times when an audience knows within a minute or two that it can relax and simply enjoy itself. And the laughs, entirely unforced, leave that audience walking out into a dank, dark London evening entirely warm and contented.

Pretty much flawless Christmas entertainment. God Bless ‘em, every one.

Photography by Alex Brenner

A SHERLOCK CAROL by Mark Shanahan

Director: Mark Shanahan

Marylebone Theatre, Park Road    24 November 2023 to 7 January 2024

Box Office: 
www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/a-sherlock-carol

Reviewer David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.