Laugh, Watson

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles, has been filmed for the big and small screens on numerous occasions, but it should not translate easily to the stage - all that fog and vast tracks of moor land, let alone the problem of the Hound itself.

It has certainly been tried, and locally: there was a production in the round using foliage very cleverly at the Old Fire Station a decade ago; and I remember seeing a splendidly dramatic version by the Steeple Aston Players in the 1970s (in an adaptation by Anthony Hinds, who then lived in the village and in 1959 had actually worked on the Hammer Films version of the story, with Peter Cushing in the title role).

Now the Bristol-based comedy troupe Peepolykus (sic: just say it aloud) brings an entirely new production to the Oxford Playhouse, rounding off a nationwide tour which began in January. Entirely new because only three actors play the 20-or-so roles, it's the Spanish one with the heavy accent who plays the quintessentially English Sherlock Holmes and they publicise the exercise thus: " . . . this reinvigorating, terrifying and foggy new adaptation. It's very foggy. And occasionally silly. But mostly foggy".

Peepolykus formed in 1996 and have toured constantly both here and overseas, winning comedy awards (so far) in Edinburgh, Madrid and Tehran. They play quite rightly on the universality of absurdist comedy and are obviously influenced by the works of Jacques Tati and, of course, the Marx Brothers. Off stage, enthusiasts at the Pegasus Youth Theatre in Oxford, the Swindon Youth Theatre and the Mill Arts Centre in Banbury may well remember taking part in performance workshops organised by the group in recent years.

Playing fast and loose with Sherlock is nothing new. There is homage, in the form of pastiche, and then there can be outright parody. Thus you can have films like Billy Wilder's cultish and elegiac The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (ballet dancers, the Loch Ness Monster and Holmes in love) and Murder By Decree (the last straightforward Holmesian pastiche film, with Christopher Plummer and James Mason investigating a certain series of murders in Whitechapel). You can then have the bizarre travesty that was the Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore version of the Baskerville tale, and the clever, under-rated Without a Clue, with Michael Caine playing a drunken actor brought in by Ben Kingsley's real Dr Watson to be a Holmes figure and give meat to Watson's tales.

This is the first time in their ten-year existence that Peepolykus have moved on to real literary ground: the three founding performers/writers (John Nicholson, Javier Marzan and David Sant) have until now drawn upon original material: such shows as their 1997 production I Am A Coffee (revealing "the hazards of time travel and the versatility of fish shops") and, a year later, Horses for Courses - "The Anglo-Siberian Cultural Foundation host a gala evening of traditional and frankly 'top drawer' Siberian Acts" (were there early ideas for Sacha Baron Cohen for his hit Borat here?). But stepping into the bogs of Baskerville caused no problems for director Orla O'Loughlin.

The potential for fun, she said, is obvious.

"It's just so full of comedic possibilities, stepping quite close to sending up these archetypal figures: the sinister butler, the Beast on the moor, the simple villagers, people in disguise and all this multi-role-playing and extreme characterisation is very much of the moment, if you think about current TV and radio," said Orla.

Jason Thorpe, whose main role is that of the threatened Sir Henry Baskerville and who on this tour replaces David Sant, is rather more comedically straightforward.

"Having Sherlock Holmes as Spanish is quite freeing, really, because you've got no archetypes of what Sherlock Holmes would be. As a result of which everyone else becomes freer around him."

Would Conan Doyle mind? Probably not. He used his greatest creation sparingly for the stage, turning one short play he wrote, The Crown Diamond, into a Holmes story later (The Mazarin Stone) and successfully adapting that other great chiller, The Speckled Band, for the boards. But when the American stage idol William Gillette was co-writing with Doyle the play Sherlock Holmes in 1899, he wrote to the author: "May I marry Holmes?" Swiftly came back the response: "You may marry him or murder him or do what you like with him."

That is exactly what Peepolykus have done: they have retained much from the original, but play daftly along the sidelines. Early reviews stated that while the actors' technique was sophisticated, performances were "hollow", although "dazzling" - put that in your meerschaum and smoke it! Let's hope that six weeks' practice will have ironed out these anomalies and that, whether or not it hurts the purist, this ensemble truly goes for those iconic barricades that protect the Holmes persona in gleeful, clownish fashion.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is at Oxford Playhouse from Tuesday until Saturday. For tickets call 01865 305305.