Theater: Fogbound

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THE CRUCIFER OF BLOOD by Paul Giovanni

The U.S. is the only country in the world in which playgoers applaud the scenery when the curtain goes up. They may have seen the best of the show.

This is certainly so in The Crucifer of Blood. The play is ostensibly about a nasty case solved by Sherlock Holmes (Paxton Whitehead) with his customarily occult intelligence — a fancifully distorted version of Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four. What Crucifer is actually about is Holmes' study, a bibliophile's opulent dream, though Holmes is so busy shooting up cocaine that it is questionable whether he could lift a book. It is also about an opium den so suggestive of for bidden and abandoned pleasures that it might serve as ad copy for Yves Saint Laurent's new perfume. One visual stunner provided by John Wulp is a fog-shrouded encounter between a steam launch and a schooner on the Thames.

Now for the bad news. Playwright Paul Giovanni is obviously an addict of Holmesiana, but in the diet of drama he is not past Gerber's. His play is silly, campy and confusing, possibly by design.

Clues fall like melting snowflakes. An Indian maharajah's purloined jewels, poisoned darts, blood brotherhood, damsels in distress, blood-drenched epistles — you name it: Giovanni uses it.

Actor Whitehead's Holmes might double as a prep headmaster, and Dr. Watson (Timothy Landfield) has been transformed into a romantic ninny. Botanically, crucifer means any plant of the family that produces mustard. This play fails to cut it.