Drew McVety is Holmes, and Thom Sesma Scrooge, or the spirit thereof, in A Sherlock Carol.
“Moriarty was dead, to begin with.” That’s the first line of A Sherlock Carol, now at New World Stages, and it will be repeated many times, for attempted comic effect. It’s a paraphrase, of course, of Charles Dickens’s first line of A Christmas Carol, and it illustrates the determination of Mark Shanahan, who wrote and directed, to fuse two beloved British authors. Let’s put Scrooge on that stage, he figures, and inject as much Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as we can, and we’ll create a jolly new holiday-season hit. He figures.
From the cheery holiday songs blaring through the loudspeakers as you enter, to Anna Louizos’s all-purpose set (a steel jungle-gym structure to hang some lamps on, fronting a mural of lighted windows), to Linda Cho’s colorful but unshowy costumes, everything about A Sherlock Carol is meant to convey a sense of nonthreatening familiarity. And that extends especially to Shanahan’s text, which leaps from easy Dickens reference to easy Conan Doyle reference to easy Dickens reference and back again, and again and again. If you’ve read A Study in Scarlet or The Hound of the Baskervilles, you’re meant to congratulate yourself on getting the references. And surely you’ve read A Christmas Carol, or seen it in any of a hundred stage or screen adaptations, so it won’t come as a surprise when Dr. Watson’s other identity (no spoilers, but it turns out he’s an important minor character in the Dickens) is revealed at the end.
Holmes and a not-so-Tiny Tim Cratchit (Dan Domingues).
So that’s where we begin, with the “Moriarty was dead to begin with,” a state of affairs that has turned Sherlock Holmes (a workmanlike, uncharismatic Drew McVety), lacking a worthy adversary, into a sourpuss, a tightwad, a Christmas hater—in short, a Scrooge. When a grown Tiny Tim (Dan Domingues), now a respected but impoverished doctor at a failing children’s hospital, entreats Holmes to solve the suspected murder of Scrooge—now, of course, his longtime benefactor and friend, not the pre-Carol Scrooge—he’s met with a “bah,” minus the “humbug.” Holmes’s Ebenezer-ishness has also caused him to sever ties with Watson (Mark Price), to refuse help to Emma Wiggins (Anissa Felix), a former Baker Street Irregular whose father has been mistakenly arrested for theft, and to hiss at Lestrade (Felix again), the incompetent from Scotland Yard. How Holmes is nonetheless drawn into Tim Cratchit’s orbit, and sets about solving the mystery of Scrooge’s demise, constitutes the rest of the unsurprising action. He’ll encounter some spirits from the past. He’ll rekindle his long-ago romance with Irene Adler (Isabel Keating, working hard), now a countess. And do you think he’ll eventually transition, Scrooge-like, from squeezing, wrenching, grasping, etc., misanthrope to generous, benevolent mensch? Well, do you?
A reunited Holmes and Watson (Mark Price). Photos by Evan Zimmerman.
Shanahan takes plenty of detours on his way to the inevitable happy ending, mainly to stuff as many recognizable Conan Doyle/Dickens references as possible into the proceedings. There’s the Blue Carbuncle, a prized diamond Scrooge was about to acquire just before expiring. There’s Cratchit’s feisty, man-hungry sister Martha (Keating, still working hard), as clever a problem-solver as Holmes. There’s Ralph Fezziwig (Domingues), black-sheep descendant of Scrooge’s old employer, engaged to Fan (Felix), Scrooge’s granddaughter. There’s Mrs. Dilber (Price, quite amusing), Scrooge’s spiritually-minded housekeeper. And, thankfully, there’s the specter of the departed Scrooge, to lead Holmes on his journey. Thankfully because he’s played by that always-welcome Off-Broadway mainstay Thom Sesma, and the good spirits of the latter-day Ebenezer are, however hackneyed and predictable, infectious, at least as Sesma plays them.
But there’s an awful lot of trudging over well-worn territory on our way to “God bless us, every one.” The quick changes of costume, identity, and gender among the supporting players can be fun, and so can Shanahan’s presumably unintentional excursions out of 1894 patois (“I get in the dumps at times, Watson”). He directs in broad strokes, encouraging overemoting, notably in Holmes’s 11th-hour apology to Watson, just in time for Christmas dinner. Still, the actors achieve moments of subtlety, and Felix, having to impersonate everything from a hapless urchin to a clueless detective to a merry tavern keeper, is convincing in each guise.
Will Dickens aficionados be pleased? Will Conan Doyle fans? The frequent utterances of “The game is afoot!” and other stock phrases from both authors provide a certain comfiness to the undemanding, and Dickens’s laudable concern for underprivileged humanity can always use another airing. A Sherlock Carol isn’t tough to sit through; it’s friendly, it contains some admirable stagecraft, Lord knows it’s familiar, and many in the audience seemed to be enjoying the well-known references and expected outcomes. But there are those of us for whom this is the sort of familiarity that breeds contempt.
A Sherlock Carol runs through Jan. 2 at New World Stages (340 W. 50th St.). The production is one hour and 55 minutes. Performance times vary during the holiday weeks. For tickets and information, visit ahserlockcarol.com.
