The route I customarily walk in London to reach the picturesque Open Air Theatre (OAT) in Regent’s Park takes me along the upper end of Baker Street and past the Sherlock Holmes Museum (which is not quite at number 221B). This proximity of museum and theatre is particularly relevant at the moment, given that the OAT opened its 2026 season this week with a new play by Joel Horwood about the master “consulting detective”. Ninety-nine years after Conan Doyle wrote his last Sherlock story, the public appetite for his adventures remains undimmed.
Horwood’s drama is not that good, comprising as it does a bewilderingly labyrinthine storyline about some stolen Mughal treasure and a mysterious Anglo-Indian woman named Mary. Yet it’s worth sitting through the wearyingly anachronistic – we’re in 1890 here – views on empire and the British abroad for the chance to have another look at the most enduring odd-couple relationship in fiction.
Joshua James, magnificent in a cerulean suit, is an arch and imperious Holmes, a man of astonishing split-second deductions and limited social skills, whereas Jyuddah Jaymes is his loyal and amiable sidekick, Dr Watson. As they hurtle through London and end up, cleverly, at London Zoo in an eerie nighttime Regent’s Park, we are reminded once again that Holmes and Watson are a pairing for the ages.
