Pitlochry Festival Theatre - Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Lipstick, Ketchup and Blood.

The Guardian 13 June 2022

At first, you assume Lesley Hart’s play is a straight adaptation of A Study in Scarlet, the first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels about Sherlock Holmes. True, there is something of the National Theatre of Brent about the enterprise; in Marc Small’s outdoor production, it is down to just two actors to play not only the consulting detective and his sidekick, John Watson, but also an assortment of coppers, kids and corpses. It is funny in its overweening ambition – blood-like tomato ketchup and all.

It does make a decent stab at telling the story, though. This is the one about the body found in Brixton, the word “rache” written on the wall and the ring that lures the possible culprit. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).