IT SEEMS reasonable to assume that Tom O'Brien was trying to create a kind of Monty Python spoof in this "Sherlock Holmes comedy", as it is described in the programme. But that kind of spoof was vested not merely in wackily logical ideas but predominantly in remarkable and sharply-professional performances, no trace of which exists in this Torn Curtain production.

If the author was trying to satirise the Holmes canon, neither his narrative (minimal as it is) nor his word-play humour is remotely rooted in anything conceived by Conan Doyle.

The script comes across as laboured, heavy-handed and awash in the cliches of very old jokes. The performances are either mightily over-the-top or significantly understated.

Words and half sentences are swallowed rather than projected and, under Liz Nugent's paceless direction, there is little evidence of any clarity of purpose.

The story, such as it is, becomes evident only towards the end of the first act when we learn that Jane Fairfax has had a cat sculpture stolen, and it is after that before we meet the likely suspects - the crazed Colonel Stark, or the dim George Ffolliott, or even the sinister Meg. By then we have lost interest in whatever the original purpose was, notwithstanding the use of a good accompanying sound-track and a nice-enough setting and costumes by Marie Tierney, well lit by Paul Winters.