Writer: Kate Hamill
Director: Sean Turner
A regendered twist on Holmes and Watson set in contemporary London seems like a promising idea, a chance perhaps to revisit some of the patriarchal constructs that fill Victorian detective novels with male intelligence and logical deduction, while women, at least in Conan Doyle’s work, are housekeepers, prostitutes and wives. And modern reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes characters have been highly successful, with Sherlock and Elementary drawing new audiences. However, Kate Hamill’s zany take on the Holmes casebook reinvented as Ms Holmes & Ms Watson – Apt 2B, playing at the Arcola Theatre, just doesn’t know what to do with its gender-swapped leads or the bulging set of mysteries that feel relentless and tonally unwieldy.
When Joan Watson moves in with Shirley ‘Sherlock’ Holmes, the American former doctor is bewildered by her new housemate’s style of living and condescending manner. Nonetheless absorbed in a series of crimes to solve, the pair are soon on the trail of a taxi-driver killer, and a master criminal who may be involved in a network of dangerous activities, but is the newly designated Ms Watson up for the challenge?
Hamill’s play is a little bewildering for an audience who never quite understands the limits of its excesses. It begins with a few loose threads – Watson herself a mystery to unravel, fainting at the sight of blood and refusing to use her doctor title, the mysterious death of a taxi driver and the disappearance of a red-headed woman. And this should be enough to drive the plot forward as the detective duo investigates. But Ms Holmes & Ms Watson – Apt 2B just keeps on going, one crime replaced by another and another, montaging most of the case book until Irene Adler appears ahead of the interval blackout. The arc eventually draws together 2 hours and 40 minutes later, but every case and character point is quickly dispatched in a frenzy of activity that adds up to very little substance, offering neither character insight nor a deeper understanding of Conan Doyle’s lasting appeal.
In between, Holmes and Watson dress up as nuns and adopt Irish accents, Holmes gets into a few shrill verbal and physical fights, they suspect a communist plot (in twenty-first-century London?), and Holmes repeatedly rejects the advantages of the internet but still orders a pizza and knows who popular culture figures are. It is zany and comic strip in places, but scenes are overlong, built around a single joke that Hamill takes far too long to deliver or repeats throughout the show. And then the play attempts something deeper with a long monologue about Watson’s experience during the pandemic, but it hasn’t earned this emotional grandstanding that sits awkwardly alongside the wacky capers.
Ultimately, Ms Holmes & Ms Watson – Apt 2B just leaves the audience confused, failing to sufficiently guide them through the plot, excluding them from the comedy which seems to make more sense to the cast and adding scenes haphazardly that extend the running time, resulting in about 50 minutes of slightly panto material stretched across the best part of three hours. It’s important and interesting to rethink classic characters, but it’s unclear who or what Hamill’s show is for or why the recasting of Holmes and Watson as female detectives played by Lucy Farrett and Simona Brown feels so redundant.
Runs until 20 December 2025
