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    ‘A Sherlock Carol’ Review: Crime-Solving on Christmas Eve

    Mark Shanahan remixes Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens into a clever, crowd-pleasing holiday comedy that happens also to be a murder mystery.It’s been three years since the grim tussle on the cliff above Reichenbach Falls, where the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty plunged to his death.But for Sherlock Holmes, the demise of his nemesis has proved unmooring. In London, lawlessness continues apace, yet the great detective has given up the fight. Adrift in ennui, he no longer bothers to ensnare the city’s evildoers. His faithful Dr. Watson, eager to get the band back together, can’t even entice Holmes to come to his house for Christmas.“There is no greater fool than one who shouts ‘Happy Christmas!’ in a city throughout which the foulest of mankind lurks ’round every corner,” Holmes growls. “I’ll thank you to leave me alone, Watson.”Bit of a Grinch, isn’t he. Bit of a Scrooge, even. In “A Sherlock Carol,” Mark Shanahan’s arch charmer of a holiday mash-up, Holmes — not Dickens’s Scrooge — is the one who is “solitary as an oyster.”At New World Stages, Shanahan directs a cast of six, wonderfully led by the Broadway veterans Drew McVety as Holmes and Thom Sesma as Scrooge. Remixing Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens, this is a clever, crowd-pleasing holiday comedy that happens also to be a murder mystery.It isn’t aiming for sumptuous elegance, like Matthew Warchus’s large-cast, high-design production of Jack Thorne’s “A Christmas Carol,” seen two seasons ago on Broadway. This is a simpler, streamlined affair looking for — and, crucially, finding — silly, festive fun.On Christmas Eve 1894, the grumpish Holmes is haunted by a spirit: Moriarty, whose presence he feels stalking him everywhere.And the beatific, reformed Scrooge? Found dead that very day by a doctor who believes there was foul play. A fan of Watson’s stories, the doctor entreats Holmes to investigate — and is thrilled when the uncannily observant detective, while refusing his appeal, says he’s known everything about him since the moment he walked in.McVety on the case.Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMadePartisans of “A Christmas Carol” get a sweet thrill as well when Holmes, too arrogant to resist, gives a quick rundown of his intel on this stranger: He was poor in early childhood, illness shadowed his first years of life, the dead man was his benefactor. In an instant, we recognize the doctor — Tiny Tim, all grown up and doing well.After he tells Holmes that a famous diamond had been on its way to Scrooge, who recently received a death threat, the detective relents and takes the case.“The game is afoot,” he says, suddenly saucy, tossing one end of his scarf around a shoulder.And off we go into a sprightly escape of a play with a fine, much-doubling ensemble and a design team trailing reams of Broadway credits: Anna Louizos, set; Linda Cho, costumes; Rui Rita, lighting; John Gromada, music and sound; Charles G. LaPointe, hair and wigs. This production is in very good hands, and so are we.There is a curious shortage lately of plays to make us laugh, let alone to tickle both children and adults. For admirers of Doyle and Dickens, here’s one.A Sherlock CarolThrough Jan. 2 at New World Stages, Manhattan; 212-239-6200, asherlockcarol.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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    Una Stubbs, Veteran Actress Known for ‘Sherlock,’ Dies at 84

    Ms. Stubbs, a fixture on British television for more than half a century, was best known to American audiences as Sherlock Holmes’s cheerful landlady in the popular BBC series.Una Stubbs, the veteran British actress best known to American audiences for her role as Mrs. Hudson, the landlady to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series “Sherlock,” died on Thursday at her home in Edinburgh. She was 84.Her death was confirmed by her agent, Rebecca Blond.Ms. Stubbs was a recognizable face in Britain, where she had appeared in comedic and dramatic roles onstage, onscreen and on television for more than half a century, including in the long-running soap opera “EastEnders” and the sitcom “Till Death Us Do Part.”American television viewers knew her best as Mrs. Hudson, the motherly landlady to Sherlock Holmes in “Sherlock.” The show, which aired from 2010 to 2017, was an international hit, and Ms. Stubbs turned Mrs. Hudson into a fan favorite by making the character a cheerful foil for the show’s darker themes.The landlady was a bit of a phantom in Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous stories about Holmes, on which the show was based. So Ms. Stubbs and the show’s creators built Mrs. Hudson into a comedic parental figure with a checkered past.“I am the mother of three sons, so I thought that would be a good angle to go on,” Ms. Stubbs told The New York Times in 2016. “I once told Benedict that my sons go straight to the fridge and make themselves sandwiches, and he did that in one episode.”She added that the creators of “Sherlock,” Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, “have made me more saucy now, and a bit grubby, which I enjoy.”Mr. Gatiss echoed that statement when he said of Ms. Stubbs on Twitter on Thursday that “mischief was in her blood.”“We were so blessed that she became our imperishable Mrs. Hudson,” Mr. Gatiss said.Una Stubbs was born on May 1, 1937, in Welwyn Garden City, England, north of London, the second of three children of Angela and Clarence Stubbs. She was raised in Hinckley, in Leicestershire. She told The Guardian in 2013 that one of her earliest memories was hiding under a dining table as the area around her childhood home was bombed during World War II. Her father, who was known as Clarry, served in the Home Guard in London during the war, she said.Ms. Stubbs trained as a dancer, and in the 1950s appeared in advertisements for Rowntree’s, a British candy company. She would later learn that her paternal grandfather, whom she never met, had been a confectioner for the company in York, England.Her breakout role was in the 1963 film “Summer Holiday,” a musical starring Cliff Richard, as a singer in a traveling musical trio. Other television credits include “Fawlty Towers,” “Keeping Up Appearances,” “Call the Midwife” and “The Worst Witch.”She is survived by her sons Christian Henson and Joe Henson, both of whom are composers and musicians, and Jason Gilmore, as well as six grandchildren.Her marriages to the actors Peter Gilmore and Nicky Henson ended in divorce, and Ms. Stubbs raised her sons as a single mother. She told The Guardian that she spent most of her life “doing two jobs, motherhood and acting, and only being so-so at both of them.”“And now,” she added, “I’m trying to do one job really well, with a bit of grannying thrown in.” More