Review: Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B Is an Unremarkable Sherlock Holmes Riff

Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B, Kate Hamill’s lampoon of famed fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes and befuddled sidekick Dr. Watson at the Old Globe in San Diego, twists Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary origin story with gender and time setting adjustments. But so much has already been said about the master of elementary resolution – the character is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most portrayed figure in filmed history – that an author must find something fresh to stimulate an audience. Hamill’s play is too frantic and trivial to excite fans of the stories.

During the Covid period of isolation, Ms. Watson (Natalie Woolams-Torres), a wayward American sojourning across Europe rents a room with a baffling flat mate, Ms. Sherlock Holmes, police consultant whose dazzling deductions make up for her frazzled personality. Holmes immediately detects that her new lodger has run away from her past and used to be a doctor. Holmes turns Watson into her new obsession, putting her new roommate through the paces as they solve multiple violent crimes that all seem to lead to notorious villains.

Because this millennium has already featured three fresh takes on Doyle’s iconic detective already, the bar was high. However, in Hamill’s play, everything is on the surface.  Forced jokes are chucked at the audience, with references and old hat nods to Seven and Indiana Jones that even Family Guy and The Simpsons have avoided for decades. At moments, Hamill appears to be forming the crime solvers as a modern Odd Couple, and then at others, as a 21^st century Lucy and Ethel. Either could have worked, but the playwright keeps altering the tone so that the evening feels more like a college improv troupe than anything coherent.

The biggest issue is the Watson character and it’s a mystery if the problem is the text, the direction by James Vásquez, or both. Woolams-Torres plays the role so broad that it’s obvious she’s in on the joke. Had it been written as if the character doesn’t know she’s in a comedy, it could have been funnier. But here, Watson has wandered in from a sitcom. There’s no real character being formed, and though her revelation of her backstory plays a big part of the second act, no fully realized character has emerged.

Rubio Quan, who plays Sherlock, was out at the reviewed performance; her understudy, Isabelle Jennings Pickering, manages to capture the fidgety and robotic detective. With a voice being strangled in the back of her throat, her Sherlock is a believable presence in the insanity around her. Nehal Joshi and Jenn Harris find their own rhythms as the multiple side characters, like Inspector Lestrade and landlady Mrs. Hudson, respectively. Harris, as the seductive Irene Adler, hilariously slips so far into camp, she appears to be playing a John Waters character. Woolams-Torres should not be blamed for the wet blanket that extinguishes any fun in her scenes. It’s an impossibly written and directed role that could have left anyone in the dust.

Sean Fanning’s set, a chess board, features trap doors that add whimsy to the visuals. Also, various chandeliers of different eras, including one made of a skull, add a timeless theme to the stage. Amanda Zieve’s lighting design highlights the chess squares to focus the dance between detective and villain. Of Shirley Pierson’s costumes, Irene’s red button down hostess dress is tantalizing.

Ultimately, this comedy is not up to par with the Old Globe’s usual standards — a work that’s already on the regional track but doesn’t add much to a season’s lineup. It’s unclear what was afoot in choosing this unremarkable play.