Sherlock Holmes vs Arsène Lupin: A Drag Crime Caper *****

The stage is sparsely dressed: a second raised platform and a couple of small crates are all that greet us. This belies the whirlwind that The Department of Ulterior Motives (DUM) is about to unleash.

We’re here to see Sherlock Holmes vs Arsène Lupin: A Drag Crime Caper - quite the mouthful.

Holmes and his companion Dr Watson need little introduction. Arsène Lupin, perhaps less familiar, was created over a century ago by Maurice Leblanc. Lupin, a fictional ‘gentleman’ thief and master of disguise, has found a modern audience through Netflix’s Lupin.

When Holmes’ arch-nemesis Moriarty dies, Lupin, bored by the gendarmes’ futile attempts to keep up with him, decides to cross the channel to pit his wits against the famous consulting detective. If this sounds a little far-fetched – well, we are just getting started.

Holmes has a crime-detecting watch, upon which Lupin has designs. An intricate game of cat and mouse ensues, in which a swathe of characters appears, including but not limited to, Mrs Hudson, Irene Adler, Inspectors Ganimard and Lestrade, and Lupin’s occasional love interest Josephine. Lupin capitalises on Watson’s growing frustration at being perpetually overshadowed by Holmes and, bear with me here, plans to steal the British Museum and make off with it beneath a flotilla of balloons.

Did I mention this was a farce?

This is an audacious and highly ambitious piece of camp, drag, comedy, clowning, slapstick, physical theatre, song, dance and choreography – and it is nothing less than captivating.

The company do not merely occupy the stage; they swarm through the entire space, spilling into the aisles and commandeering the occasional empty seat. The audience reels, trying to keep pace as the scenes unfold, one after the other, each as funny, inventive, absurdist, engaging and entertaining as the other.

Although the production might loosely be described as a romp, the precision of the ensemble’s work, both on and off stage, is remarkable. The energy never relents, nor does the pace. It’s not perfect – any attempt to lean into Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal is likely to be challenging – but it hardly matters. The audience revelled in the barrage of gags, sexual innuendo, song, dance, identity confusion, swirl of movement and general gallivanting. Some aspects evoked the spirit of Reeves and Mortimer and there was a most definite nod to Some Like It Hot.

The cast – Maria Evans, Chully Mullock, Esther Dracott, Emma Howarth, Phaedra Danelli, Michael Grant and Alex Scarrott were uniformly excellent, supported by Alex Louise’s seamless stage management. Dracott’s storytelling was always engaging and skilled, but a special mention for the outstanding and nuanced performances from Mullock and Grant. All of this would not have been possible without a backroom team led by Samuel Masters, with Cerys Duffy, Ella Palmer and others.

This is a step up from DUM’s The Man Who Was Thursday from last year’s Brighton Fringe. They benefited from a more expansive space this time out, which they exploited to the full.

Roll on 2027.