Sherlock Holmes and the Athanaeum Ghoul

From the Manchester (U.K.) Evening News:

In this latest manifestation, a tortuous tale by writer Carl Miller, we find Holmes the worse for wear, overtaken by the boredom of retirement – and cocaine, administered by his caring boy housekeeper. Does Holmes have hidden depths after all?

Dr Watson has moved on – and written a play about the old sleuth. As we watch his creaky production on the stage of the Athenaeum Theatre, it is interrupted by a horrible murder. The ghoul has struck. Watson calls Holmes into action.

Miller has created a play true to the tradition, a sort of end-of-the-pier whodunnit (you’ll never guess).

It involves Victorian underlife, where young girls get sold for toffs’ pleasure, an actor of the old school bent on getting a knighthood, a steam-filled Turkish bath in Covent Garden, a fearsomely howling fiend, like one of the hounds of the Baskervilles, and a coup de theatre which failed to work. Guns go off, things explode, people scream.

The newspaper's theater critic Philip Radcliffe gave the play 4 stars (out of 5). How I wish I could see it performed!