FringeReview UK 2025

Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson

Arcola Theatre, Dalston

Genre: Adaptation, classical, Comedy, Contemporary, Costume, LGBTQ+ Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre

Venue: Arcola Theatre, Studio 1

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

Has Moriarty struck again? Is it a dastardly plot? The Arcola lets its collective hair down and critics are horrified. The audience, still numerous despite the drubbings, react differently. It’s a Christmas show! Bah humbugs and homburgs. If Kate Hamill’s Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson directed by Sean Turner (Associate Director for The Play That Goes Wrong) can’t match the subtlety or caffeinated invention of Sherlock (2010-17), or the recent (2020/2022) Enola Holmes films, it’s deft and yes funny; if not as funny as it thinks it is. I was warned I’d not get back two hours and twenty minutes of my life. In the event, it was two hours twenty-five. But I’m happy I spent them here, despite the tramp back to Brighton. Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson  plays at the Arcola Theatre’s Studio 1 till December 20.

It marks Arcola Theatre’s first co-production with Reading Rep Theatre, though this play has travelled to the U.S. in 2024 and featured a different cast. It pays homage to the original with a light touch, and makes few pretentions to be serious. That said, there’s one harrowing moment that makes one wish it could have developed differently. And it’s not just that Moriarty smiles, though it’s all quite personal. It’s the point of the show. An avowedly “bold feminist” take on agency and friendship, for most of the time the plot wrestles with how to pay homage whilst spinning an original storyline: and in outline it achieves this. In detail, there’s the question of how seriously comedy wants to take itself.

There’s some pratfalling from the cast as they’re suddenly told the production now can’t afford period costumes, and it’s set in the present day. It’s the kind of jape you hear on radio shows. Then there’s Lucy Farrett’s entrance in a fencing mask and sword. It isn’t a touch I confess. Nevertheless, fight director Marcello Marascalchi has some serious work cut out in this caper.

Farrett speaks for the most part in a slightly strangulated comic key, except when donning an Irish brogue with her nun’s habit later. Known known for her comedy – Sally4Ever, Alice’s Adventures Underground – Farrett now takes Holmes for a slightly performative rollercoaster of eccentricity. Farrett revels in this partial character, though you can’t help feeling she’s also slightly constrained: paradoxically in a character corset.

Simona Brown (Dreaming Whilst Black) is Ms – not Dr – Watson. An identity hinges on this, the heart of the play, which begs questions about where that is. When Alice Lucy as Mrs. Hudson, in the first of her recurring roles, admits a tenant to pay bills, Holmes quickly deduces Watson’s a doctor. Watson vehemently denies this. Throughout, Brown plays Watson not as someone aways catching up but one whose mind is wired in an opposite, equally telling way.

This Holmes is already on the point of giving up, and later returns to this famed ennui with nothing worth solving before the greatest challenge of all. As for partial knowledge (Holmes was famous for his gaps), Ms Holmes has improbably never heard of Star Wars, or other entertainments. Which given cultural saturation is less likely now. Sherlock got round this, and Enola Holmes dispensed with them. These nods don’t add up to more than the occasional gag here. That’s one critique of a show that’s had one run with a text that seems still evolving. Hamill hasn’t yet faceted Holmes’ quirks as adjuncts of the plot.

Some traits – the possible sociopathy – are however now the core of the play. Billed as feminist high-jinks, it does deliver a completely different set of relationships outside the dysfunctional duo. Whilst Tendai Humphrey Sitima’s suave Inspector Lestrade displays a less bumbling facade. Sitima’s also objectionable Elliot Monk whom the pair don’t relish: the tech bro blackmailed by Irene Adler. That’s Lucy again, who also plays grieving Mrs. Drebber. Here there’s a division of lusts as Lestrade tacitly hits on Watson, whilst Adler has a thing for Holmes; and, well there’s chemistry. As in the original.

The two cases allow both admirers in: Lestrade to peer over Mrs Drebber’s husband pulled out of a drawer slain by “red-haired anarchists” or “murdering Marxists”; there’s gossamer homage to a few plots. Lucy’s main role though is of “that woman” – not a phrase used here – Irene Adler. Lucy, released from fussy upright Mrs Hudson or shrinking Mrs Drebber is all seduction and elegantly slashed stocking. Lucy purrs playful menace; Sitima’s tech bro has been compromised by a tape. Twists here are enjoyable, setting up that frisson between Adler and Holmes, though more explicitly.

Designer Max Dorey has scored with an ingenious set; for some it’s the star of the show. Though it works through the show’s demands of it. Anyone who’s just seen Crocodile Fever in this space might feel quite at home. At first glance, it’s a strikingly similar layout: a detailed kitchen with blind-draped window in a set with three-quarters surrounding audience. Use of the gallery above though (sometimes reserved for audience) has been reconfigured to consummate effect, including a very 221b black gleaming door above its 2a flat. David Howe’s lighting is particularly effective here, suggesting a hallucinatory penumbra and a bright light diffracted by the time it reaches the homely kitchen.

The black door lets on to one below. There’s surprising drawer pull-outs under the kitchen sink, the cupboard, a pink fridge which works as a fridge. By this time you expect yet another person to tumble out of it. The skull across the room next the armchair seems almost tame by comparison. And the sword stands. Dorey’s set impresses and is definitely the fifth actor in this show. There’s natty work from costume designer Sara Perks. And Hattie North’s sound pops up on devices, including Holmes’ insistence on playing the scherzo from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.

How the four characters finally collide is worth encountering. There’s too much emphasis on fringe-y jokes, and the cast’s brio services a three-quarter caper. It lacks the frenetic homage you’ll find in Sherlock. But it’s a worthy – and original – enough variant for an entertainment. More curious is how Brown’s reveal on Watson’s life anchors the serious conversation of the night. A tale of trauma during the pandemic, it drifts in from another play. The core of this work is recognising empathy and friendship against deductive brio; though can Holmes grow? Here though specifically female mutual aid blossoms from the anarchy. And a recognition that the pair’s gifts precisely complement each other. A final rewrite might make more human comedy of the joust, less of the jinks. It’s a surprisingly tender end – though of course the game’s afoot as the light go down. Don’t expect Sherlock, and you could be entertained by Ms Holmes. And emphatically Ms Watson.

Movement Director Laura Jane Romer-Ormiston, Assistant Director Mark Diaz, Costume Supervisor Madeline Edis

Production Manager Joe Prentice, Stage Manager (on Book) Rosie Fleming, Assistant Stage Manager Mikaela Mondlane, Shadow Assistant Stage Manager Edward Langley.

Production Carpenter/Associate Production Manager Amy Mitchell, Production Electrician Matthew ‘Lux’ Swithinbank, Production Sound Engineer Gareth Stevens, Scenic Construction Bower Wood Production Services

Lighting Programmer Joe Bloodworth, Photo Credits Alex Brenner.

Published December 11, 2025 by Simon Jenner