The Bear and Ragged Staff in Cumnor has hosted drama before, but only Shakespeare. Last Saturday, it welcomed Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson for the first performance of a cleverly constructed best-of-Sherlock production. On show were three members of the newly founded Don’t Go Into The Cellar theatre company — Birmingham-based and specialising in Gothic horror and Victorian melodrama. They first thought about doing something Holmesian in January — and it is to their credit that a packed audience in the restaurant area clearly enjoyed the result.

The Holmes brand is rampant at the moment, with film and TV hits hugely popular; no wonder that small theatre groups come in on the coat-tails. The moving force here is Jonathan Goodwin, who plays Holmes exceedingly well and wrote the drama expertly — he’s been a Sherlock fan since he was 12. The format: a ‘new’ mini story — Zofja Zolna is the maiden in distress — and then 40 minutes of bravura monologue from Holmes (interrupted occasionally by Gary Archer’s Watson).

So we have spoken highlights from The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Speckled Band, memories of Moriarty and, all in all, an impressive pull-together of episodes from the Sherlock Holmes canon. Goodwin brings a Jeremy Brett-like thrust to his Holmes; his talent, and that of director Rachel Green, will take this, and other company offerings, beyond the pub circuit. See www.dontgointothecellar.com — they’ll even come to your house to perform a ‘Fright Night’!