Overview

Watson: The Final Problem provides a tour-de-force part for an actor of power and versatility, who is given the opportunity to conjure a wide variety of places, times, and situations aided only by light and by sound. The audience is led from the darkest depths of evil, through the heights of adventure and triumph, to eventual despair and loss, but John H Watson's strength and optimism will not be defeated, and through telling the tale and revealing astonishing and long-held secrets he finds new hope and enthusiasm for whatever the future might hold. As well as a piece for performance, the play can also be read as a short story, forming a companion piece to the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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9781789635485

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Reviews

""Truly wonderful theatre."" (Brian Godfrey, the GlamAdelaide website) ""Brilliant interpretation of the Holmes stories putting Watson front and centre, and it works splendidly."" (The Edinburgh Review) ""A great tale well told."" (Anna Ambelez, The Reviews Hub) ""We are used to seeing Watson as the bluff, no-nonsense old campaigner. Here is the man behind the mask: a real human being."" (Heather Owen, editor The Sherlock Holmes Journal) ""A good pastiche should advance the sum of Sherlockian/Holmesian knowledge; and Marriott and Coules have done so with a brilliant take on what motivated both the master criminal and the master of detection."" (Hal Glatzer, performer, journalist, novelist and playwright)

Author Information

Bert Coules worked at the BBC as a music librarian, later moving to the radio drama department, first as an audio technician, then as a script-reader, and finally as a producer-director before leaving to become a freelance writer. He built up a reputation both for original pieces and for dramatisations, including versions of books by Isaac Asimov, Ursula le Guin, Ian Rankin, Alastair MacLean, J B Priestley, Val McDermid, and many others. He was the head writer on the BBC's unique project to dramatise all sixty of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the first time it had ever been done with the same two actors in the leads throughout, an undertaking chronicled in his book 221 BBC. Tim Marriott trained at the Webber Douglas Academy after university. He is best known as an actor, playing Gavin in every episode of the hit BBC situation comedy The Brittas Empire but also has multiple writing credits, including the stage plays Appraisal, Shell Shock, Jack's Ashes, Mengele, and a new piece, A Special Relationship. Most recently, Watson: The Final Problem and Appraisal sold out performances and won awards at festivals in Edinburgh and Adelaide as well as earning a season in New York as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival in New York. A Special Relationship opened in London in 2025 and transferred to New York later that year.

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