‘Watson: The Final Problem’ (Venue 17, until AUG 28th)

“A leisurely cruise along familiar waters in good company.”

Tim Marriot is a Fringe treasure. Once found he is forever and jealously hoarded by a growing cadre of followers who will be in his audiences year in year out. He is a storyteller of the auld skool, one who can expertly tailor his material to each crowd individually. He brings much artistry onto the stage, but no great mystery as to how he does what he does so well. We’ve entered to find him lurking at the back, sizing up the audience. I wonder what he’s looking for. What are the signs and signals he’s come to know? When the game’s afoot the house lights stay up so that Tim can read faces and follow reactions. There’s a barman at the Grand Hotel in Varese who, after years at the American Bar in London, can at a glance mix you a pre-dinner cocktail containing the exact, the exact, the precise amount of booze necessary so that you arrive at your table perfectly buzzed. Tim Marriot does something similar before and as he treads the boards. The results are intoxicating.

We find ourselves in rooms on Baker Street in the company of its other famous resident. The medical man scarred by war and grief. Dr Watson has lost the loves of his life – his beloved wife as well as his esteemed colleague and friend. This is the moment in the Sherlockian canon when Edinburgh’s own Conan Doyle had had enough of Holmes and sent him plunging from the Reichenbach Falls. Watson does not know that, under the tremendous pressure from the reading public, he and Holmes are to be reunited.

Only one thing matters in the Holmes universe – authenticity – and this holds true if the setting is on the deck of the Starship Enterprise or among a collection of garden gnomes. For ‘Watson: The Final Problem’ Tim has collaborated with Bert Coules whose career has included work on the BBC’s ‘The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, ‘Cadfael’, and ‘Rebus’. A scholarly Sherlockian, Coules has written and directed a production so firmly rooted in cherished tradition that you’d be forgiven for imagining that Jeremy Brett is about to make an appearance.

This isn’t a show that’s going to rock any boats. It’s a leisurely cruise along familiar waters in good company. Who was Watson before Holmes? How did they meet? What was he like to live and work with? What dangers did they face? How did Holmes come to be atop the falls at Reichenbach on 4 May 1891? Some of the direction is a little over the top, Tim throws himself to the floor more times than a toddler having a tantrum. Still, the overall effect on exit is of having been sitting in an auld armchair listening to a good friend tell his tales.

Come for the reliability of an EdFringe favourite. Stay for the familiarity of Holmes and Watson done proper. Get your Inverness capes on and go see this!