I don’t know what I expected Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre to be like, but at first it meets you like you’ve wandered into the Shire. I am incredibly excited to see my first show here, but it’s somewhat disarming. It completely diffuses any of the pomp and circumstance around a trip to the theatre. We are all one, gathered in the park to take in theatre. Without walls, that feels even more special.

I have to confess to having never taken in any version of Sherlock Holmes. I know, I know. But perhaps that’s the best way to enter this world. I’m quickly learning it so often is.

I cannot begin to fathom how this space is going to be even remotely engaging, but I remain very optimistic.

Interval thoughts…

A tad chilly, but utterly captivating. Precision pacing, a plot that pulls you with it and keeps you on your toes.

I haven’t been this excited about a piece of theatre for a very long time. Perhaps some of this is entirely down to the location, but I am very happy to have been caught hook, line and sinker by it all.

Plays like this have an ironic propensity to place everything in front of your eyes, the plot distilled before it’s even begun, the secrets given away before you have a chance to feel carried away with it all.

This production avoids that beautifully.

The play is choreographed so tightly, with set pieces and ensemble constantly in motion, adding so much kinetic energy to the evening. I’m baffled the last hour and ten minutes has passed. It feels like but a blink of the eyes ago. Impressively, there is not a moment of filler or fluff in sight, every line and movement only adding to what feels like another example of great British theatre in a year that has quietly seen a reassuring rebellion against an armada of film-based musicals that add very little, if anything, to what audiences have already been given. Of course, those productions have their place in keeping the industry alive, but theatre like this deserves protecting at all costs.

The show finished about twenty minutes ago and I have to be completely honest, it lost me very quickly.

I could not tell you what happened in the end, nor why the revelation was seemingly so shocking. It genuinely felt as though the play pulled the ultimate bait and switch at the interval, suddenly transforming from what felt like a clean and tightly constructed investigation into something I was completely unprepared for.

I also couldn’t work out whether the story itself had ended, or whether what followed was meant to be the conclusion to one of Doctor Watson’s books. By the final moments, I felt less intrigued than completely untethered from what the production was trying to tell me.

There is no faulting the immaculate staging of this production, but if a play ends with far more questions than it ever felt interested in answering, one has to question who the fool really is.

There are clearly lead-ins to the wider Holmes world, but are we really at a point now where theatre cannot sustain itself and stand on its own?

I don’t take back my earlier praise, but I do question who this production is actually for if so much of its ending depends on knowledge the audience may not already have. I would certainly argue that it is nowhere near as accessible as it perhaps believes itself to be.