Under the umbrella title Lip Service, comediennes Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding have made a considerable career from taking an irreverent look at the classics. This time they have resurrected a past collaboration, the Garibaldi Biscuit Affair, which is a hilarious pastiche on super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes.
Not only have Fox and Ryding co-written this decidedly eccentric look at the famous detective, they play all the roles themselves, which leads to some highly amusing moments, with or without facial hair, as they change from frocks into frock coats. It is all great fun.
The intimate auditorium of the Library Theatre is the ideal venue and Kate Owens’ simple picturebook set cleverly revolves, with a bit of help, from Holmes’ Baker Street study into the Strand Theatre, a railway carriage and the middle of Dartmoor.
As Holmes and his bumbling friend Doctor Watson are called in to investigate a series of mysterious circumstances, they meet, among others, a whole gamut of Music Hall characters including the Motherless Twins and Death-Defying Dan and his whelk-infested Tank of Terror, although we never quite meet the male impersonator Vesta Curry. Need I say more?
Gwenda Hughes directs with pace and there is some slight updating of the script, plus original music composed by Mark Vibrans with the lyrics of a jolly ditty by Malcolm Raeburn.
The purists may be offended but this is Lip Service at its best.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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