Vertigo's Holmes spoof is A Long Night's Journey

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As Vertigo's Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – #2B proves, you really can have too much of a good thing.

The first 100 minutes of Kate Hamill's Canadian premiere of all things Sherlock Holmes is a fascinating showcase for the unique talents of its four cast members, especially the unlikely Sherlockian Julie Orton.

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Orton's Sherlock is like a buzzing bee, constantly on the move, talking quickly as he moves, jumping over furniture and even walls. His body seems to be trying to catch up with his amazing mind and amazing deduction skills.

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Tahirih Weidani's Joan Watson is the perfect foil as she constantly tries to plant herself and take in what's going on around her. They are the perfect pairing any good comedy needs.

All the male characters, including the narrator who opens the play with an accent as thick as the London fog, are played by the sly Graham Percy, and all the female characters are played by the rational, brooding Camilla Pavlenko.

Kathryn Smith's direction is as witty, clever and creative as the spirited hijinks she learns from her actors, especially when it comes to shuffling the furniture to take Sherlock and Watson from their London flat to several hotels, other flats, flats. train station and several streets. Smith explains that if we think we should take anything seriously, including murder, kidnapping, and double-crossing, the joke is on us.

Hamill changed not only the gender of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous duo, but also the era in which they lived and worked. We are no longer in Victorian England, but in post-Covid 2021 London. The biggest joke is that Holmes is basically stuck in the same old Doyle world, ignorant of or uninterested in cell phones, social media, and computers. to poor Watson's disbelief and anger.

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Around 160 minutes after the first installment, Sherlock must solve four crimes before the curtain closes. The first is a corpse in a bathtub, then the location of the sex tapes of an American politician, then the unmasking of a master criminal. Of particular interest to Holmes, and to a lesser extent the audience, is his new roommate's insistence that he is not, and never has been, a doctor.

It's Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade (Percy) who enlists the help of Holmes to find out who killed Elliot Monk (Percy), a taxi driver, in a hotel room and how. All of this body schtick is one of the show's funniest moments, especially when Watson gets caught under it. Pavlenko plays Monk's wife, the British housewives in the tradition of Monty Python and the cast of “Children in the Hall” so famous. It's also Smith's way of acknowledging that what Hamill wrote was a series of skits in the style of Python and Kids.

This bathtub murder brings Holmes and Watson into the world of red-haired dominatrix and extortionist Irene Adler (Pavlenko), who has a sex tape of the American billionaire and politician. Smith doesn't think the Calgary audience will get the joke, so he enters Percy wearing a Trump mask.

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Irene's arrival brings with it a great deal of sexual tension, and the verbal seduction scenes between Adler and Sherlock are really clever, punctuated beautifully by Wezhdani's reactions and her hatred for Adler. It is this event that heralds the arrival of Sherlock's nemesis, the evil mastermind Moriarty.

Sherlock doesn't reveal Watson's secret, he forces him to reveal it, which, as we've seen on other occasions, seems to be Sherlock's power.

Between the pre-show announcements and the intermission, Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson take just under three hours. It would be fine for a play by Shakespeare, Chekov, Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill or Tennessee Williams, but not an over-the-top, self-congratulatory, feminist homage to all things Sherlock. All the clever antics of the actors and the director, which at first seem inventive, interesting and innovative, start to tire like the actors themselves. There isn't enough plot to keep the audience breathless for new revelations.

Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson runs through June 9 at the Vertigo Theater at the base of the Calgary Tower.

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