Fringe review: SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE LAST ACT, Assembly Rooms
Many actors have played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic creation of the Victorian consulting detective Sherlock Holmes over the years on screen so he is a familiar character to us all.
David Stuart Davies’ Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act imagines Holmes returning from the funeral of his friend and raconteur in Strand Magazine, Dr Watson. Over the course of an hour, he revisits many of their most interesting adventures in a monologue addressed to his recently decreased companion.
Nigel Miles-Thomas portrays Holmes as a serious, cold man with intense eyes and animated eyebrows. There are hints of the portrayal by Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone in his performance but not quite the energy and excitement of Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downey Jr in the character . This is the challenge of retelling a familiar story with so many wonderful portrayals that have gone before and nothing new to add to the stories.
It is a good performance recreating key characters and describing famous cases but as he observes himself: "I have become dull" and his reflections on his thirty five year relationship with Watson are a reflective retrospective and, like the lodging they shared, are comfortable without being exciting. Holmes would surely have found it elementary but we were left wanting a more insightful game afoot .
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne