Stage Review - Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson: Apt 2B (Harlequin Productions)
Stage Review - Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson: Apt 2B
Presented By: Harlequin Productions - Olympia, WA
Show Run: January 24 - February 09, 2025
Date Reviewed: Thursday, January 30, 2025
Run Time: 2 Hours, 30 minutes (including 20 minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
Funny thing going into this past week/weekend, I looked at the calendar and saw two Sherlock Holmes plays in the offing, well I guess two Holmes-adjacent plays is a better way of saying it. There has been a lot of Sherlock on the Seattle stages over the last year or so, or at least enough that it’s been noticeable. And the two titles from Thursday and Friday were eerily similar, the first, Harlequin’s Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson: Apt. 2B and the second, Centerstage’s Miss Holmes. The latter I took in earlier this season at the Seattle Armory’s Center Theatre, and a show produced by Latitude Theatre. The former I knew very little about, though any idea that it might follow a similar tact to Miss Holmes was dispelled when I realized it was a Kate Hamill play. Kate Hamill is known for her female-centric, more feminist adaptations of classic stories, and while Miss Holmes tends to follow more of a classic Sherlock formula but with female leads, with a tagline describing this play as “cheerfully desecrating the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”, I knew straight away that Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson: Apt 2B would be unlike any of those other Sherlock Holmes stories I’d seen on stage to date. It is, indeed, a Sherlock Holmes mystery involving all of the familiar characters, including the long-suffering landlady Mrs. Hudson and everyone’s favorite inspector Lestrade, but it’s also an irreverent, self-deprecating, hilarious Holmes and Watson origin story that pits an unlikely pair of women against a case that has enough twists to make any Holmes fan bow down in appreciation.
The Harlequin production, which runs on stage at the State Theatre in Olympia through February 09, is directed by Makaela Milburn and features a cast of four incredibly talented professional actors representing at least six characters that they are credited for in the program and others that you’ll have to see the show to find out about. The play isn’t just a farcical mystery in which Ms. Sherlock Holmes receives a prospective new boarder, a Ms. Joan Watson, then deducing why the two should work, and cohabitate together (“It’s elementary!), but it’s also one of the first products of the Covid pandemic that doesn’t just acknowledge it, but embraces it, uses it as a plot point, and as a punchline. For anyone curious about the kind of art that the pandemic and its shutdown would produce, a group that included me for sure, if Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson is any indication, we should continue to expect some pretty unique things coming to our stages over the next few months and years.
The play features Lindsay Welliver as Ms. Holmes and Karin Terry as Ms. Watson, but it’s Morgan Gwilym Tso that the audience meets first, a sort of narrator, or at least someone there to set the stage for everyone. Before Morgan enters, though, the audience has a good chance to look at the set, the famous door to 221B to stage left and the rest of the stage representing a living room, though with blankets over the sofa and coffee table. Those are removed shortly after the show begins. But looking around at the props, selected and placed courtesy of properties designer Rob Taylor, there are pieces that clearly don’t fit into the standard Sherlock Holmes time period. Lucky for me, though, because I don’t have to call that out here, Morgan quickly tells the audience after being corrected from backstage, that this show is, in fact, not a period piece, that it’s happening in present day, setting the stage for the aforementioned pandemic references among other things. With the time period accuracy of the set no longer an issue, I’m able to consider Bruce Haasl’s scenic design with a different lens. The type of play that this is, a hilarious farcical murder mystery, it requires a certain pace, a pace that can make a show when it’s quick and break it when it’s too slow. Slow set changes shouldn’t be responsible for bogging down this play down, and that’s the beauty of Bruce’s set work. The set is mostly Holmes’ living room,, which feels like part detective’s flat and part archeologists’s office, replete with artifacts, maps, and a bulletin board with pushpins and string, one of those like you see in the movies connecting all of the victims and suspects in a crime. There are some other moveable pieces, some that slide in from offstage, some that rotate, and others that sit above the living room that represent other locations that Holmes and Watson visit, and the Holmes living room does double as another location later in the play.
As the play begins, Lindsay Weaver’s Holmes is mired in self-pity, feeling alone, washed up, and depressed in a post-pandemic fog, with nothing new to motivate her. But then comes a knock on the door, and when Mrs. Hudson opens the door to lead Karin Terry as Joan Watson in, it sets into motion a series of events that will impact everyone’s lives in the play. It seems that Watson, coming off of a recent divorce, is trying to “find herself”. Intrigued, Holmes immediately begins trying to figure out this newcomer, first calling her Dr. Watson, even though Joan claims she is not a doctor. Not only that, but why does this Watson seem to faint at the sight of blood, when she’s a doctor, but of course she’s not a doctor, right? When Sherlock insists, and Watson pushes her for a reason, with a lifting of a finger, and exclaiming “It’s elementary!”, the detective goes into a dissertation and logics through why Watson absolutely must be a doctor. These monologues from Holmes are also a great example of Sumer Munroe’s excellent lighting work, when Holmes points her finger, the lights immediately turn red before she launches into the basis of her deductive reasoning. It’s a funny moment that is repeated a few times, and even funnier when Morgan tries to do it himself as Inspector Lestrade and it doesn’t work. As Holmes continues to push, and Watson thinks that perhaps this may not be the place for her, the inspector stops Joan in her tracks, telling her she’ll take the case, that being the case of Watson.
Perked up by her newly found sense of purpose, to help figure out Watson, Holmes takes the reluctant newcomer on all of her case calls, and while everything seems to be going well between the two, they stumble on a difficult case and an even more difficult villain that is apparently always one step ahead of the pair at every turn. The mystery takes all of Holmes’ deductive abilities and all of Watson’s, well, presence, to solve a case that feels like a moving target right until the very end. It’s rare to have a farcical mystery in which both aspects are done well, usually one suffers, but here the mystery is indeed well constructed, and the humor is top notch, well paced and so funny.
For a cast of four, there are so many good performances, so many funny moments, it’s honestly difficult to count them all. Lindsey’s Holmes is extremely good, she’s traditional, which means, for a present day piece, no Google, no phone, no Internet, and she thinks that blood tests, fingerprints, and surveillance tapes are “cheating”. It’s humor from exaggeration, and when Karin’s Watson pulls out her phone, or mentions Googling something, or some other technology-based device, Lindsay’s scoffing is hilarious. And there is so much between both Lindsay and Karin, in their dialogue, their pacing, reactions to each other, and mannerisms, they’re all quick, natural, and genuine. The relationship between Holmes and Watson is largely undefined, in fact they can’t even figure out what they are, roomates, mentor/mentee, friends? That’s a mystery unto itself, and entertaining to watch the pair try to figure it all out. While Lindsay’s Sherlock is surely the more dominant personality, Karin’s Watson is more of the straight, if there is one, reluctantly going along with Holmes on just about everything. Watson is always the steadying voice in Sherlock’s world, but here Karin has the added requirement of being a more complicated and layered character than other Watsons that folks might be familiar with. What I like about both of these performances is the way they present the physical aspects of their humor as well as through their dialogue, they both understand very well how these plays work, and the way they’re able to do that and manage the mystery shows how good they both are, but there’s a scene, let’s just call it their “herbal” scene, that’s my favorite, one in which the two relax after a challenging day, which is one that brings them closer together as a team and in their relationship, a scene that shows a different dimension in their comedic acting, that’s just stellar.
Meanwhile, Morgan and Pilar O’Connell may be considered supporting actors in this play, but that would be a disservice to their talent and their contributions. Each play a minimum of three characters, and both are a substantive piece in the puzzle that is the plot. And both are exceptionally funny. For Morgan’s part, whether it’s as the show’s narrator, leading off both the first and second acts setting the scene for the audience with his thick British accent, or Inspector Lestrade, with a different accent, or even eccentric Texas oil tycoon Elliot Monk (don’t have to dig deep for this reference), this time with a thick Texas drawl, he’s so good, and this level of comedy is a dimension of his acting that I’ve not seen from him previously, it’s refreshing, it’s enlightening, and it proves that Morgan is one of the most versatile actors in the region. When it’s discovered that a crime may be tied to a group of, of all things, socialists, Lestrade’s hunting of said socialists is downright sidesplitting and some of the funniest moments in the show. Pilar is excellent as Holmes’ overly frustrated and long-suffering landlady Mrs. Hudson, but it’s as Irene Adler where Pilar really shines. With Irene, Holmes has met her match, she’s flirty, sultry, and the two have a strange chemistry between them, while Watson finds Irene absolutely repelling. Pilar is superb at delivering innuendo and presenting the mysterious aura that Irene surrounds herself with in contrast to the other characters they play here. Take a listen for a few theatrical “Easter Eggs” from Pilar’s performance as Irene, too, there are some pretty funny ones,
With a play that moves as quickly as this one does, with pace and precision, it does take a team to make it work, and besides the actors, the creative team that Makaela has put together does it all. The movement isn’t achievable without Makaela’s creative blocking and fight director Candace James’ work. Candace is also the intimacy director, so that chemistry between Irene and Sherlock, between Pilar and Lindsay, that I mentioned, Candace should receive some credit for that as well, as does dialect coach Camilla Kintana for all of the wonderfully delivered and varied accents in the show. The team is rounded out by Gina Salerno’s sound design and Krista Lofgren’s costumes, both excellent here.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I came into Harlequin Production’s Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson: Apt 2B, having seen other Holmes mysteries with female versions of the lead characters, but this is something different, something more, and something very unique. The play is a smartly written, irreverent, murder mystery, quickly paced, and extremely funny, presented by a cast of four actors who know how not just to make an audience laugh, but to deliver a mystery that twists and turns its way through a serpentine of obstacles that keep the group, and the audience, guessing until the very end, resulting in what can only be described as the most fun theatre has to offer.
Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson - Apt 2B, presented by Harlequin Productions, runs on stage at the State Theatre in Olympia through February 9. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://harlequinproductions.org/.
Photo credit: Shanna Paxton Photography
