Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B
Writer: Kate Hamill
Director: Sean Turner
Cast: Lucy Farrett, Simona Brown, Tendai Humphrey Sitima, Alice Lucy
Producer: Arcola Theatre and Reading Rep Theatre
Dates of run: Until December 20
Running time: Two hours and thirty minutes, including interval.
Popular wisdom maintains that the appeal of the traditional whodunnit is in its reassuring message that problems will be solved and justice will be done.
But what if there are no easy answers, asks Tendai Humphrey Sitima, who amiably takes on the token male characters in U.S. writer Kate Hamill’s version of Sherlock Holmes.
Renowned for her female-centred adaptations of the classics, Hamill transports us from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s foggy Victorian London to the post-pandemic, 21st-century capital and makes the protagonists women.
Watson (Simona Brown) is an American doctor, unable to practice for reasons that become apparent, who walks unsuspectingly into Sherlock’s rat-infested basement flat, never to leave, despite all the anti-American jibes only a U.S. playwright is allowed.
A Mrs Hudson with more to her than meets the eye, played energetically by the chameleon Alice Lucy, reinforces the argument that the women are in power, while Sherlock, played a few decibels too emphatically by Lucy Farrett, has all the character’s legendary powers of deduction and eccentricity.
She is at her most thought-provoking in her aversion to social media and dismissal of Moriarty’s malign embrace of technology with the words “the process is the point”; we allow evil or artificial brains to do all the thinking at our peril. If, after all the production’s giddying plot twists, there is an answer to Tendai Humphrey Sitima’s opening gambit, it is arguably this.
The set of the flat, designed by Max Dorey, is another of the show’s strengths, with its carefully chosen clutter and kitchen units with sometimes shocking contents.
Much of the rest strains too hard for the laughs that the audience on the night I attended was reluctant to deliver. Perhaps even the feminists in its midst were thinking Benedict Cumberbatch’s interpretation is a very hard act to follow.
Production photos can be found here.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B
Writer: Kate Hamill
Director: Sean Turner
Cast: Lucy Farrett, Simona Brown, Tendai Humphrey Sitima, Alice Lucy
Producer: Arcola Theatre and Reading Rep Theatre
Dates of run: Until December 20
Running time: Two hours and thirty minutes, including interval.
Popular wisdom maintains that the appeal of the traditional whodunnit is in its reassuring message that problems will be solved and justice will be done.
But what if there are no easy answers, asks Tendai Humphrey Sitima, who amiably takes on the token male characters in U.S. writer Kate Hamill’s version of Sherlock Holmes.
Renowned for her female-centred adaptations of the classics, Hamill transports us from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s foggy Victorian London to the post-pandemic, 21st-century capital and makes the protagonists women.
Watson (Simona Brown) is an American doctor, unable to practice for reasons that become apparent, who walks unsuspectingly into Sherlock’s rat-infested basement flat, never to leave, despite all the anti-American jibes only a U.S. playwright is allowed.
A Mrs Hudson with more to her than meets the eye, played energetically by the chameleon Alice Lucy, reinforces the argument that the women are in power, while Sherlock, played a few decibels too emphatically by Lucy Farrett, has all the character’s legendary powers of deduction and eccentricity.
She is at her most thought-provoking in her aversion to social media and dismissal of Moriarty’s malign embrace of technology with the words “the process is the point”; we allow evil or artificial brains to do all the thinking at our peril. If, after all the production’s giddying plot twists, there is an answer to Tendai Humphrey Sitima’s opening gambit, it is arguably this.
The set of the flat, designed by Max Dorey, is another of the show’s strengths, with its carefully chosen clutter and kitchen units with sometimes shocking contents.
Much of the rest strains too hard for the laughs that the audience on the night I attended was reluctant to deliver. Perhaps even the feminists in its midst were thinking Benedict Cumberbatch’s interpretation is a very hard act to follow.
Production photos can be found here.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre