GSC’s ‘Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson’ Delights

By C.J. Williams

Gleeful send-up and homage, this gender-swapped Holmesian adventure set in 2021 London, featuring a New Yorker Watson and a cast that clearly delights in the havoc of playing multiple roles at speed (one-man Lestrade-Moriarty-Sleazy Politician, anyone?) Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson by Kate Hamill is a quirky, funny-bone-prodding sprint for its full two-hour runtime.

Playing off both the familiarity of the famous detective and the novelty of resetting the time period and swapping the characters’ genders, Hamill’s play opens with a campy Victorian (Stephen Shore, also playing Lestrade, Moriarty, and many others) mis-setting the scene. He’s hastily shooed off the stage–the lights turn up, the modern era rolls in…and so does Watson right off the jet from New York and ready to rent a room from Mrs. Hudson.

If you don’t know the Holmes stories well, you may just miss out on some of the best bits of this production. While Hamill has kept things madcap and light-hearted enough to draw any theatergoer into the story, knowing the three original Holmes adventures she draws from, and some of the more eccentric details of Holmes’ character, adds that much more to the experience. And perhaps one of the strongest aspects of the play is its winsome balance between spoof and love-letter. You’ve got to love a character, and the stories he’s featured in, to mess this keenly with them.

As Hamill messes, the characters stress–or at least, all of them but Holmes. Holmes, a fair-haired, waist-coated young woman with a gymnast’s flexibility and a drug habit when she’s bored, immediately takes to Watson as a “puzzle”. Watson, rightly offended at being used as a jigsaw, is a stress-case incarnate. Her backstory becomes part of the mystery; her defiant refusal to let anything out (or to admit to the title “doctor”) becomes part of the comedy; both together build the Holmes-Watson dynamic.

But she is in distress. It’s post-pandemic (barely); everyone has just gone through lockdown. Only Holmes seems unfazed, unless her boredom is a sort of trauma. It turns out, moreover, that Watson was in New York during the worst of the pandemic. Her PTSD shows up surprisingly in response to others’ authentic pain…but is it because she’s caused pain in her past? Or something else?

As the show cascades through a comic version of A Study in Scarlet, A Scandal in Bohemia, and maybe The Final Problem, Watson’s trauma continues to intrigue Holmes, people die, and every cast member shines. Whether it’s Holmes (Eryn O’Sullivan) rattling on at warp speed or flopping face down to hear the footsteps (and predict the soon-to-be-visitor’s identity) on the stairs, or Stephen Shore (Lestrade) chatting up Watson or missing all the most important clues in the current mystery, the players in Holmes and Watson put the word ‘energetic’ to shame.

The staging, by Gloucester, is also clever; scenes change seamlessly thanks to the fantastic light direction. The blocking keeps the action as lively as the verbal repartee. Hamill’s scaffolding is fully furnished and finished by director Rebecca Bradshaw and the rest of the behind-the-scenes cast.

Perhaps the only hiccup in the story falls in the finale. While Hamill lays the groundwork like any mystery writer – problems placed later to be solved or unpuzzled – she does not convincingly wrap up Watson’s mystery trauma or the unsettling and resetting of Holmes’ character defects in relation to Moriarty and the potential friendship with Watson. This was a minor disappointment in a play so well-tuned to the fun and mental rigor of the original Sherlock Holmes mysteries. But even without an internally likely explanation for Watson’s phobias, the play ends on a high note–high drama, high stakes, high fun. (No one, despite Holmes’ habit, is actually high at the end).

Send up? Homage? Maybe there is no perfect label for something that loves its characters and its humor this much, except rousing good fun. Whether you’re a longtime Holmes enthusiast or just a longtime lover of good shows, Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson is a show that can’t help but please. For more information and tickets, go to: https://gloucesterstage.com/