Unlocking Sherlock is a new show about learning to ask the right questions … not what seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but questions to which the answer will reveal something new about the problem you face. (A method that the politicians sitting on NI Assembly Committees would do well to practise.)
The vehicle for this endeavour is Sherlock Holmes, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s huge catalogue of stories providing fruitful fodder. A series of interconnected stories and illusions that build up to a final reveal. Humour abounds and the audience become gently involved. Objects vanish into thin air. Cards appear on demand. People are chosen. Numbers are selected. And always, even if we have to wait, the answer is in plain sight.
Whether, like me, you overthink what you’re seeing and try to figure out how it happens – I smugly explained one of the simpler sleights of hand to the befuddled audience member beside me, only for the method to be revealed to the audience minutes later as part of the plot! – or simply sit back and enjoy being baffled and bewildered.
Sitting to the sides of the circular stage are The Baker Street Irregulars, with sultry crooner Kyron Bourke on piano and extravert Padraig Dooney on a digital wind synth. They accompany Caolan’s storytelling with their original music and whimsical improv songs that the audience lap up.
Detectives solve crimes while magicians hide answers. In the case of Caolan McBride’s show, he unlocks an attitude of looking past tricks to see the bigger picture of the story with the help of Cahoot’s writer Charles Way and artistic director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney.
Unlocking Sherlock is suitable for late teens and older, and runs as part of Belfast International Arts Festival alongside Cahoots NI’s The Musicians of Bremen Live! (ages 5+) until 2 November. (Update - both productions are now sold out.)
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