We think we are here to see how playwright Molly Taylor has paid tribute to the work of Arthur Conan Doyle, but it turns out we are actually the audience at CrimeCon, a fan convention for lovers of detective fiction. Today’s special guest is Dr Jo Watson (a perky Alyce Liburd), here to be interviewed about her latest book. This being 2025, a podcaster is keeping track of it all.
Chester is some distance from 221B Baker Street, something Taylor’s gag-laden script draws attention to with the arrival of a metropolitan Sherlock Holmes (a loose-limbed Ethan Reid) who, despite his love of travel, holds these northern parts in low regard. He has shown up to lend Watson support after the theft of a painting from Eaton Hall, seat of the Duke and Duchess of Westminster (Eddy Westbury and Hannah Baker struggling to remember what the heirloom actually looked like).
With a healthy awareness of the audience (there are wrong ’uns among us), director Ellie Hurt keeps the twists and turns of the plot tripping along in the outdoor arena, emphasising the jollity with live music played by the cast and the occasional song. Even Sherlock has a go at the karaoke, taunting his adversaries with a full-bodied I Will Survive.
If anyone will survive it is this detective, with his dazzling deductions and debonair cool. For all his pizzazz, though, only the unsung Watson will get him through it.
It is all breezily daft, the acting broad – sometimes too broad – and the story spooling out ever more preposterously as we encounter vicious nuns in Liverpool Metropolitan cathedral (cue Mersey tunnel jokes), a scheme to blow up much of central London and a Moriarty who wants to be his “authentic self”.
“Stranger things have happened,” says Sherlock. “Not in Chester,” quips the local inspector.