Highly Suspect is a well-established theatre company in Cumbria, creating humorous, interactive murder mystery weekends, party entertainment, corporate events and regular shows to the Festival Fringe.
For this Murder Mystery, the year is 1898 and we are greeted on arrival by Mrs Hudson, Detective Inspector Lestrad and Dr. Watson, smartly dressed in bowler hat and tweed coat, who formally welcomes us: “Friends, colleagues and amateur sleuths,” in Mark Antony oratory fashion, revealing the devastating, tragic news that Sherlock Holmes is dead, murdered in his rooms at 221B Baker Street.
As the Doctor is sadly mourning his partner in crime, Mrs Hudson suggests she makes a cup of tea and a biscuit – ‘complimentary, my dear Watson’.
At the back of the auditorium, Mycroft Holmes stands up to remind us that his brother did not perish at The Reichenbach Falls and faked his death in many cases to trick the culprits. So we are asked to help solve the ingeniously complex case of ‘The Death of the Great Detective’. But has he really been brutally strangled, stabbed and shot in a locked room? One person who is present in this room is guilty.
Smart phones at the ready to access the secret crime scene report online with background information, newspaper reports and a strange letter written in code. For those who prefer, there are folders of printed papers to share with your group of fellow detectives.
We are advised to follow Holmes’ mantra - “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It is suggested that to crack the cunning code, work clockwise through the letters and symbols and there are pseudonyms hiding the real identity of likely suspects.
Dr. Watson finally addresses this gathering of amateur sleuths to see if there are incisive, genius minds at work. A woman who solves the code reveals that she is a maths teacher. Children in the audience love the exciting, immersive experience discussing the clues with their family.
The clever, creative, convoluted narrative is a masterly construction with colourful period detail and fictional facts of Sherlock’s life and times. Crisp characterisation, witty one liners – with hilarious improvisation – taking part in the task of brain-storming detection, creates a most entertaining afternoon for all ages.
The dramatic setting at Symposium Hall, Royal College of Surgeons, is most apt as Conan Doyle based Holmes on Dr. Joseph Bell, his medical professor at the University of Edinburgh.
Show times:
16th-21st August @ 3.25pm
Ticket prices: £10 (£8).
Suitable for ages 8+
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/highly-suspect-murder-mystery
N.B A future production by the Highly Suspect Company will be staged on the actual train used in the Kenneth Branagh film "Murder on the Orient Express (2017), at Bassenthwaite Station, the Lake District.