Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (reviewed Friday 14 November 2025).
Castle Hill Players closes its year with Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear, a bawdy, meta-comedy written by David MacGregor.
From the moment the curtain parts, set design (Paul Sztelma with Abby Bishop) reveals Victorian parlour splendour filled with deep red fabrics, ornate furnishings and smoky haze outside the window. The world is saturated, tactile, and instantly engaging.
Lighting design (James Winters), sound (Paul Sztelma with Chris Harriot, operated by Deb Lewis), and costume design (Annette Snars with Jennifer Hurst) deepens the immersive atmosphere.
MacGregor’s script is a Frankenstein patchwork of historical fan fiction, Sherlock Holmes canon and pop-culture references – where Sherlock Holmes meets Oscar Wilde and Vincent Van Gogh (the Elusive Ear referring to Van Gogh’s famously severed organ).
The cast tackle the material like they always do with bravado.
Brendon Stone’s Watson is nimble and endearing, giving a performance that is crisp, fretful and stiff-upper-lipped towards Holmes’ indiscretions. His earnest bafflement — confessing he could never match Holmes’ brilliance of deduction because he hasn’t the faintest idea how butter-soaked the parsley is, or lamenting the fate of married men — drew some of the night’s biggest laughs.
Ben Wheeler’s Holmes twists the archetype of the brilliant detective: arrogant and aristocratically lazy, asserting his dominance with contrived leg-up poses, and relying on Watson to configure his body into an image of respectability.
Nicole Harwood as Irene Adler is sassy, lively, and impressive with her accent switches.
Holky Bramble as Marie Chartier brings sharp comedic bite and strong accent work to her villainess role, channelling playful dominatrix energy that leaves several characters – quite literally – at her mercy.
Oscar Baird’s Vincent van Gogh is played as a fragile, disheveled dreamer. Fantastic performance in the most complicated role.
Ben Pobjie’s Oscar Wilde is an undeniable standout: larger than life, with a voice that reverberates like velvet thunder. Every entrance and sentence feels as though the very air pauses to observe his statuesque physique and intellect.
With a fantastic mix of very different characters, it’s not hard to see why the plot feels uneven. The dramatic rope pulls the tension in competing directions, yet the cast carry on, endeavouring the spirit of playfulness towards fun. Who cares if Vincent Van Gogh is writhing on the floor, screaming in agony, looking like a pitiful homeless person? In another baffling scene, Irene Adler delivers a fiery feminist speech, only to then acquiesce the men by fetching them drinks. The sword-fight scene – in which the two female characters strip to their underwear – feels more like a projected male fantasy of empowerment than driven by logic. It’s not necessarily exploitative, but it is contradictory; a misogynistic comment from Watson is met with complete silence from the women, while Adler’s intellect is construed as foreplay.
And while the jokes are cheap on both sides, discussing the size of men’s ‘tripods’ and what not, Harwood and Bramble embrace their sensuality with a knowing don’t-tell-me-how-to-consent! attitude – just shut up and relax and enjoy the eye candy! And for the most part, the audience does.
Van Gogh, meanwhile as aforementioned, is wailing, writhing, and dragging an ornately framed Starry Night across the stage, then declares he has no money. The script prods into his addictions and mental health issues, and the audience seemed unsure whether to laugh or just pity him. The script wants his anguish to be both tragic and funny, even fetishising his love for his muse, but for a play that wants to say something subversive about the pretentiousness of art and talented artists not being recognised in their lifetime, it feels, well, like a lot for a Sherlock Holmes play where the very character of Holmes is secondary to the overpowering legacy of Van Gogh and the brilliance of Oscar Wilde.
Phew!
That said, the actor’s generosity saves Van Gogh’s dignity and soul: he plays this caricatured version with real feeling and pain – beyond the running gag of how to pronounce his name.
Opening night closed with a well-deserved celebration. Sztelma recognised the immense team effort behind the production: the backstage crew, designers, operators, and especially Annette Snars for her dual role as Stage and Costume Manager.
Sztelma also praised his sword-fight choreographer, Lauren Turner, admitting those moments made him “claw his seat” in terror.
This is a show carried by consistently high production values that distinguishes Castle Hill Players. Their on-brand professionalism – supported by family and familiar faces behind the scenes – creates a warm sense of community that audiences everywhere appreciate.
A starry, but not elusive, four stars.
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear is playing at The Pavilion Theatre in Castle Hill til 6 December 2025. For tickets and showtimes, go to https://paviliontheatre.org.au/holmes-and-the-elusive-ear/
Image Credit:
Chris Lundie