In “A Sherlock Carol” playwright Mark Shanahan conflates Charles Dickens’ Scrooge fable with a Sherlock Holmes story. Now running at The Stagecrafters Theater in Chestnut Hill, the play, which premiered in 2021, is perfect for the holiday season, amusing in a droll way even as it casts an atmospheric spell.
Tiny Tim is fully grown, a well-dressed doctor in a children’s hospital. Only his cane and telltale limp hint at childhood travail. Tiny Tim asks for Sherlock’s help; his benefactor, Ebenezer Scrooge, was found dead in a chair, and the smell of almonds leads Tiny Tim to suspect a cyanide murder.
But we know Sherlock will not help, because we met him in the opening scene. Arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty died at Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps (now a popular tourist destination). Without Moriarty, Sherlock’s life has become meaningless. Dour as flint–hearted Scrooge before his conversion, only the ghostly echo of Moriarty intoning his name — courtesy of sound designer John Gromada — can startle Holmes back to the living.
In Sherlock’s opening despair, the detective wistfully remembers Irene Adler, another character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in the short story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Adler is the only woman Sherlock loved. But Shanahan intertwines the plot from Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” to create a new mystery. It is Christmas, and someone stole the blue carbuncle gemstone of Countess Morcar from her hotel suite. A reformed criminal, John Horner, is falsely arrested.
Sherlock wants to give up on life, but old habits die hard. When Tiny Tim gives Holmes the clue of an old rumpled hat, Holmes immediately deduces it could not belong to young Horner. He asserts it belongs to an older man with silver hair, who is on the outs with his wife, has grown penniless, and has taken to drink. Hurry, Watson, the game is afoot!
The professional polish of the Stagecrafters production is exceptional. Shanahan’s confluence of references to Dickens and Doyle could easily grow precious. But director Catherine Pappas assembles a cast and a backstage support team that turns “A Sherlock Carol” into a special event.
Thanks to Patrick Martin and Richard Stewart, the darkish sitting room set captures the Victorian period and Holmes’s downcast mood. Claire Adams’ costume design sums up each character. In the better Holmes stories, you are taken on a tour of back–-alley London, and Adams’ striking costumes do double duty as de facto props in suggesting a sense of locale.
Joseph Earles is a splendid Holmes. He never throws his body around, as he makes you see how Holmes’ imperious use of reason overrides emotion. In his early despair, Earles is only impolitely curt, never overtly sad, except when Holmes thinks about Adler. When Holmes converts to positive belief, Earles does not jump up and down in ecstasy. He merely sports a radiant smile.
John Pinto has starred in many Stagecrafters shows. Here, he plays Scrooge as a counterpoint to Holmes. Sometimes Scrooge is cranky, sometimes he jumps for joy like a little boy. Haley Hartline, Madison Claus, Nathaniel Fishburn and Lorraine Barrett shine in a score of roles, as Holmes rampages through London. With all the rapid costume changes, watching these four actors re–create the bustle of rough and tumble London is its own spectacle.
“A Sherlock Carol” is a fine respite from the glut of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” shows. Yet, it delivers the same holiday message about earning redemption through concern for the other.
The Stagecrafters Theater is located at 8130 Germantown Ave. “A Sherlock Christmas” will run through December 14. Tickets are available at 215-247-8881, or online at thestagecrafters.org.
