STAGE WEST: "Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson -- Apt. 2B" at Old Globe

Sherlock Holmes (Ruibo Qian, seated) presides in "Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson -- Apt 2B." Photo by Jim Cox

            This is when it hit me -- what “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B” was going to be like: when consulting detective Sherlock (don’t call me Shirley) Holmes (Ruibo Qian) announced to roommate Joan (don’t call me Doctor) Watson (Natalie Woolams-Torres) that a dead man’s alias was “I.P. Freely.”
            Ah, those junior high days. So long ago.
            Actually, Kate Hamill’s mystery-comedy, onstage in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, is more sophisticated than that. Hamill’s serpentine script does demonstrate her keen knowledge of the Sherlock Holmes canon, not only in characters familiar to readers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Professor Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade, adventuress Irene Adler) but in plot points culled from various Holmes stories, including “A Scandal in Bohemia” and the novel “A Study in Scarlet.”
            The mysteries here are gravy. The comedy, rife with physicality and double entendre, is the main course.
            In Hamill’s reimagination, Holmes and Watson are two women residing in London in 2021. (There are pandemic references early in the play that seem to disappear, never to return.) Joan Watson is the engine that propels the tale forward. In spite of being beset by recurring panic attacks, Watson is the audience’s emotional connection not only to the inscrutable Ms. Holmes but to all the hoo-ha going on around them both.
            Introduced to Holmes by her landlady Mrs. Hudson (Jenn Harris, in the most exaggerated of the multiple roles she plays), Watson encounters the abrasively brilliant, razor-sharp Holmes and at the outset wants no part of rooming with her.
            Of course she ends up doing so and becoming companion to Holmes’ investigations. It’s never believable that the two women are building a genuine friendship. The exasperated Watson seems ever on the verge of “I’m outta here.”
            Which is not to say that the two aren’t fun to watch together. Qian’s manic Holmes and Woolams-Torres’ vexed Watson are a splendid comedy pairing and under the direction of James Vasquez they make the art of comic timing, well, elementary.
            Trying to follow the dense, wayward script is anything but elementary. It’s true that Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories could be thick to the point of impenetrable, but in a mostly-comedy like “Mrs. Holmes & Mrs. Watson” that degree of complexity is unnecessary. I’m absolutely not one to tell the prodigious Kate Hamill how to write, but if I was having a go at a Holmes as a contemporary spoof, I’d concentrate 90 percent of my energy on the characters, and the whodunit be damned.
            So naturally the sight-gag moments in this show work best – such as Holmes and Watson sharing a bathtub with a corpse, or the two of them dressed up like nuns from Ireland spewing “sure and begorrah’s.”
            The high jinks do become shrill and enervating over the course of a show that’s two hours plus, with intermission. It’s like Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers flew in on their “Airplane!” and hijacked the Holmes/Watson story.
            The aforementioned Harris and Nehal Joshi carry the load as the supporting cast. While Harris’ portrayal of Mrs. Hudson and the widow of a murdered man are strictly Jerry Lewis Time, her sultry Irene Adler is a highlight of the production. The character doesn’t appear until the end of Act One. Her presence in Act Two gives the show some bam and glam. Joshi’s stammering Lestrade is there, as he is in Conan Doyle’s tales, mostly to bow to Holmes’ superior brain and skills. Joshi’s Texas-talkin’ Elliot Monk, first appearing wearing a Dubya mask over his face, deserved more stage time.
            Qian flashes all the anxious genius and high octane verbosity of a cracking good Sherlock Holmes, while Woolams-Torre’s Watson is the funniest character in the show. They’re somehow able to navigate all the chaos around them without being completely consumed by it.
            Sean Fanning’s inventive scenic design in the White space and Melanie Chen Cole’s sound effects work in lockstep with the pace and parody of this production. It’s an accomplishment that storytelling as busy as this is does not feel claustrophobic. There’s a palpable sense of play in the technical aspects of “Holmes & Watson.” Jolly good, that.
            Seems like every year on the San Diego theater scene some company somewhere is producing a Sherlock Holmes knockoff, but that’s no different from television or film really. Holmes is an iconic character no matter how you slice it. “Ms. Holmes & Mrs. Watson – Apt. 2B” is the latest but won’t be the last incarnation of the great detective we’ll see in these parts.
            “Ms. Holmes & Mrs. Watson – Apr. 2B” runs through Sept. 1 in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre.