Sign of the four: Sherlock Holmes returns for Christmas comedy by two duos

New songs by musical colossi Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. A script by Humphrey Ker and David Reed, old muckers from sketch troupe The Penny Dreadfuls. And a fresh grisly-merry case for Sherlock Holmes. You can only deduce from this evidence that Birmingham Rep has a likely hit on the horizon.

Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas – which will open at the Rep in November – follows Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective around London’s Theatreland. Holmes suspects someone is bumping off actors, Rice explains, “matching each gory death with something from the 12 days of Christmas”. He chuckles over our video call: “Quite a funny idea!”

The plot was cooked up by Ker and Reed, who have been pastiching the mastermind sleuth since what Ker calls their “unbelievably populist move” to make “all-Victoriana-centric sketch comedy” as Edinburgh fringe favourites The Penny Dreadfuls. Reed says the play “has the spirit of a pantomime – it’s warming people’s cockles in the winter, and it’s deeply daft and fun. And there are some cracking songs.”

Those tunes have reunited lyricist Rice and composer Lloyd Webber whose three big hits from the 1970s – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita – have proved imperishable and are all on stage again this year. Reed explains how the two duos collaborated on the play. As he and Ker wrote the script, they highlighted “a nice place for a song” here and there. The pages were then dispatched to Rice and Lloyd Webber. “And then a song you can’t get out of your head comes back … My phone’s just full of bangers now!”

Ker says he would receive voice notes from Lloyd Webber: “They’re like, ‘Oh, I was sort of knocking around, having a bath this morning, and I found myself going pom-pom tiddly pom-pom-pom and anyway, here’s this!’ And then he’ll play something.” Reed adds: “You suddenly discover he is sat at his grand piano.”

The project dates back to lockdown. “Humphrey was in the States [where his projects have included Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s takeover of Wrexham AFC, as documented in a popular TV series]. I was living in York at the time, and so the script has been written largely by email,” says Reed. “It reminded me of the old days when we started out, living in Edinburgh together. I recently found our old sketchbook which had the first sketches we ever wrote together in it. We’d sit in a pub called the Pear Tree and one of us would just keep writing until we dried and didn’t know what the next line of dialogue was. Then we’d hand it over. And the other one would do it, like the consequences game.”

Holmes and Dr Watson inspired characters on their 2008 BBC radio series The Brothers Faversham: “Theseus Faversham was the world’s greatest detective, and he had a slightly hapless sidekick.” How funny do they find Conan Doyle’s original stories? Reed suggests most of the humour comes from Holmes’ relationship with Watson (“it’s mostly Holmes being mean to him”) and Ker finds a dry humour in the detective’s misanthropy. “But what’s really funny,” he adds, “is Brigadier Gerard, Conan Doyle’s less well-known series about the greatest cavalry officer in Napoleon’s army, in his opinion. Everyone else thinks he’s kind of a wally. He’s incredibly brave because he’s slightly too stupid to understand the danger he is in.”

Funny lyrics are “usually easier to write than serious love ones”, says Rice. “Everything’s been said about love.” His eyes flash and he picks up a pen. “I’m going to write that down. That’s a good title for a song. A bit long-winded but you never know … If you’re trying to write a love song, it is true that everything’s been said by people much greater than I, like Sammy Cahn or Cole Porter.”

Rice outlines how his own partnership with Lloyd Webber worked in the 70s. “I’d submit the story to Andrew, he would then write music inspired by the plot and then I would add lyrics. And then a big process of endless meetings and something like that would take a year or two.” This project is different because the story was already worked out and they were called on to “provide a half a dozen little light moments. I mean, I think some of the songs are quite good, so I hope they won’t be too light.”

He went round to Lloyd Webber’s last week for a “get-together around the piano” and the composer played one of the tunes, which Rice recorded on his phone. “Then I can take the tune home immediately, listen to it a few times, stick some words on it, paying attention to the storyline. And then it goes back to Andrew and we sing it together. And if it works, which so far they have, then we say, well, this is a suggestion. It’s then up to the directors and the producers to a) like it, and b) put it in the show if possible.”

Lloyd Webber’s reign as “king of the musicools” is brilliantly spoofed in comedy duo Flo & Joan’s One Man Musical, starring George Fouracres, currently at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho. “Yes, that got very good reviews,” observes Rice. “I want to go and see it, but I don’t want to cause a fuss by turning up. Apparently I’m played by a bag of rice or something. It’s probably more lively than me. I don’t think Andrew’s seen it.”

Anyway, the pair have their songs to polish for Sherlock. The show is produced by Birmingham Rep in association with Rice’s company Heartaches Ltd, whose team includes his son Donald (Ker’s brother-in-law). It opens in November, directed by Phillip Breen with Becky Hope-Palmer, for audiences “aged 10 to 110”. Ker says that he and Reed “both love Christmas. I mean we’re both very much anti-grinches. I’ve long maintained, whenever anyone asked me what my dream job is, that I’d like to be the sort of Christmas TV tsar across all channels. I’d like to coordinate between ITV, BBC, Sky One, Channel 4, whatever. So, OK, you’re doing the Agatha Christie this year, you’re doing the beloved sitcom reboot …”

Winter is a great time for storytelling, they agree. Reed recently took his seven-year-old daughter to her first panto. “I think her first experience has perhaps skewed her expectations,” he says. “She got to go up, quite randomly, on stage and save Maddie Moate from CBeebies. You don’t always save the life of someone you recognise off telly. She’s now hooked!”

• Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas is at Birmingham Rep, 14 November-11 January 2026