It was wonderful to be at the Alma Tavern theatre last night and for nearly all the seats to be taken. This small theatre is an ideal venue for a little company like the Tobacco Tea Company that had loads of energy and was putting on a relatively new play needing intimacy and directness. The piece is a new take on an old and well-worn story, known to most people now because of the Benedict Cumberbatch version on television. The conceit is that you never know who is in charge of things. At one time it appears to be Watson and then Moriarty and then at last it’s Holmes himself.  At one point even the police constable claims to be masterminding the plot before all the cast quickly put him straight. The intimacy allowed the cast to move easily between competently playing different characters and addressing the audience directly on the silliness of it all.  They could send up phrenology and graphology as the pseudo science it is and show the ridiculousness of some of the Sherlock Holmes’ plots. They were particularly good at being arch and knowing with the audience with a slight lift of the eyebrow or twitch of the mouth.

The piece worked best when the cast used action rather than words. There is a lovely bit at the beginning where a tea trolley is used as an orchestra pit and some tiny props are displayed for the amusement of the audience. Seeing Holmes swinging golf club and in the process, killing his own client was a winning theatrical coup. There are also some clever sound effects of shooting when the actors ducked out of the way of bullets shot by the toy guns. Otherwise the audience had to work hard to follow the extremely wordy script. The cast of three did extremely well and were funniest when they were performing directly to the audience but the script was too wordy to be truly funny in itself. I couldn’t see that having Sherlock Holmes as a woman brought anything extra to the performance. There were no particular jokes to be had from the change or any feminist point elucidated as far as I could see. Although Mrs Hudson’s performance was lovely – played by a man – it might have been better to have the normal casting. But that was the only problem with the direction, which was slick and to the point. The action flowed on seamlessly and there was no drop in the pace.

It was a piece well suited to this theatre, well acted and directed and I hope they continue to get good audiences for the rest of the run.    ★★★☆☆    Keith Erskine   12^th April 2017