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Crackpot funny men Dan Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (aka childrens’ TV frequenters Dan and Jeff) tune their 70-minute shortcut theatre format to one of Britain’s greatest, most in vogue and most serious-minded of detectives.
As it turns out, there’s much to tickle funny bones with the characters of Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr Watson. In the 56 stories and four novels that featured the investigative genius, writer Arthur Conan Doyle penned his fair share of rush summing-up and clunkily convenient endings. Clarkson, and his co-writer brother Tom, have tapped into these more out-there moments as they race through all the cases in Holmes’s canon.
Their ‘potted’ format has already seen the duo truncating the Harry Potter novels, pirates and pantos. With this slapstick sleuth show, it is beginning to feel a little tired. There are plenty of sharp one-liners and funny double takes, but the whole production struggles to lift the laughs it should. The material may be new, but the gags are all the same.
But there is a welcome addition to the usual cast in Lizzie Wort, who has a cheeky smile, the haphazard costume changes sorted and delivers a totally winning rendition of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. She gives a nice balance to Clarkson and Turner’s occasionally fraying double-act.
This is barely-nuanced old-fashioned stage silliness. There’s charm in the delivery and laughs to be had, but even 70 minutes feels not quite potted enough.