Lawrence Batley, Huddersfield
This version of Conan Doyle's classic is an enlightened, if somewhat unexpected, collaboration between one of the North West's oldest theatrical institutions, Oldham Coliseum, which is currently under renovation; and one of its most progressive, digital design specialists, Imitating the Dog.
Imitating the Dog are known for labyrinthine spectacles such as Kellerman and Hotel Methuselah, which, according to the company's mission statement, "locate new forms of storytelling for a culture where narrative linearity no longer holds sway". Their involvement with this project seems slightly incongruous, as Clive Francis's melodramatic reduction of the novel is as linear as they come.
To reveal how Imitating the Dog imitate the dog would spoil things, but the production reeks with atmosphere, from the chill mists of Dartmoor to the warm fug of Holmes and Watson's bachelor pad. Key phrases scroll seamlessly across the action in a montage of text and image you would expect to find on an iPad screen rather than framed within a proscenium arch; though there's also a certain amount of showing off. Not content with simply conjuring up a digitised billiard table, one of the characters plucks out a virtual cue ball, polishes it, and puts it back.
Brilliant as this may be, it tends to engulf Kevin Shaw's production, which never seems to arrive at a decision whether it is presented in earnest or as knowing spoof. Gwynfor Jones's Holmes says "elementary" a lot, which as any true Sherlockian will tell you, the great detective never did. But Leigh Symonds' Watson makes a redoubtable sidekick, and there's a chilling climax as Steven O'Neill's villainous Stapleton is sucked to a suffocating death on the mire. It's a horrible way to go – sedimentary, my dear Watson.