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Christmas Mysteries: A Sherlock Carol @MaryleboneTHLDN

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A mash-up of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes would seem an unlikely pairing. Yet it provides a surprisingly fun Christmas-themed adventure. These two Victorian tales (albeit separated by about 40 years) provide the basis for an inspired adventure at Christmastime that just also happens to turn out to be a murder mystery as well. With lavish costumes, a few spooky set pieces and some good old-fashioned stage trickery with lights and a lot of smoke machines, it is hard to resist. It returns to the Marylebone Theatre for Christmas after a run there last year.  The premise is that after Holmes sees off the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty, he is left adrift in London. People thought he was dead, and he might as well be. Disinterested in the misdeeds of other Londoners, Holmes has even given up on his friend Dr Watson. It's almost as if he has become a Scrooge. Or half a Scrooge, moping about shouting, "bah" in respon

Theatre: Shuman Plan

On Monday night I was unfortunate enough to find myself watching the Schuman Plan at the Hampstead Theatre. For a major theatre with its own artistic director it was a little odd that they were presenting something that seemed like a high school drama class production. It was earnest enough to be one. The only difference I could see was that it lacked youthful energy and acne. Huge slabs of dialogue were taken up with political history and there was at some point a character playing former PM Ted Heath mincing it up with "Land of Hope and Glory" playing loudly in the background. Oh at this point it is probably worth mentioning Schuman was the French Minister who came up with the idea that would become the basis for the European Union.

A was a bit annoyed that we went to see crap theatre. But I thought it had potential as a story but the writer decided to ignore all that and focus on a polemic about Britain in the EU instead. Schuman didn't feature at all. It was just as well I nodded off at various points in the first half as that made it more bearable. I should have taken heed that the writer's previous work was a musical about the Eurovision Song Contest. Maybe he'll have better luck next time. Michael Frayn was in the audience and served an interesting reminder as to what good writers can do with political dramas (see "Democracy" and "Copenhagen").

On the way home we debated how the critics would see it. I anticipated that it would be a unanimous pan. And the Telegraph, and The Financial Times did, but someone from the Independent thought it was entertaining. Maybe they stayed for the canapes afterwards which did go down well…

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