Robin Johnson – Broken Holmes

After being a member of the technical crew for a performance of this piece of drama, I was intrigued enough by what I saw to buy a copy of the script so that I could peruse the writing in a more leisurely manner.

Having only read one of the Sherlock Holmes stories all the way through (and this being a number of years ago now, at school); I was initially worried that I wouldn’t understand all of the ‘in’ jokes within the script. To my surprise, the humour was pretty self explanatory, and the allusions made to the works of Conan Doyle were obvious enough without seeming to be pretentious on the part of the writer. The witty writing seemed to be offset by the somewhat slapstick aspect of humour right at the end of the piece, and although this isn’t a bad thing in itself, I felt as though it partially let down the more subtly humorous writing in the first half.

The pace of this play is rather snappy, although pauses are still used in order to facilitate humour, which works to a great effect. Whilst there are parts which go through seemingly lengthy expanses of dialogue, the action carries on at a decent speed and flows rather smoothly from one situation to the next. Again, I felt as though the end let the overall piece down a little. Abrupt, and with a taste that seems almost unfinished, it’s suddenly the final curtain and the audience is left (in the actual theatre as well as after reading the text) as though it should simply be an interval, instead of the end of the whole piece.

Character wise, the satirising of Holmes and Watson was done rather well, and the two protagonists fit in with the ‘larger than life’, stereotypical conniving villainess and the slightly dim but well-meaning policeman. Each character has their own type of humour, each different a little from the last. We as readers/audience members also get a bit of a back-story regarding all four characters. Although this information is limited, it is nevertheless just the right amount to make these otherwise satirical, farcical beings just human enough to be able to relate to and to some degree, care about.

I was however, a little disappointed with the ending. It was as though the author knew they were either running out of steam, or running out of time, and thus had to wrap things up and end them rather quickly. So much more could have been done in order to wrap it up a little better, including making the ending wittier, instead of presenting the readership with an innuendo that was so obvious it was almost painful. Thankfully, the ending of this play isn’t absolutely dire, but I did find it a bit of a shame.

All in all, the play has a strong plot and very witty dialogue. It’s easy to see why it received good reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009.

To visit the official Broken Holmes website, click HERE.

2 Responses to “Robin Johnson – Broken Holmes”

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