For Sherlock, just a bit too elementary

Like the sound of a boiling tea kettle on a stormy day, the figure of Sherlock Holmes has a comforting quality that induces nothing so much as the desire to curl up.

Several times during “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure,” the drowsily entertaining Steven Dietz play that opened Wednesday at the Pasadena Playhouse, I found myself reaching for an afghan only to realize that I wasn’t on my couch but at the theater. With no blanket at hand, I was forced to make do with my program, which was decidedly not as cozy. Some pleasures, it seems, are most fully appreciated at home.

Which isn’t to say that you won’t enjoy seeing Holmes deduce his way toward the truth onstage. The spectacle of the reasoning detective has perhaps never been such a sight for sore eyes.

In a dogmatic age in which belief routinely trounces verifiable fact and a succession of belligerent sound bites passes for argument, what could be more salutary than the virtuosic display of Holmes’ cognitive prowess?

Equally welcome, however, would have been a bit more prowess of the theatrical kind. Dietz’s dramatization, adapted from an 1899 play by William Gillette and Holmes’ creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, isn’t particularly inspired. A mishmash of tales hastily patched together, the piece doesn’t have much ambition beyond ushering the infallible Holmes and his crime-solving companion Watson before a friendly audience.

That same commercial competence is basically what David Ira Goldstein’s production delivers. It’s harmless, good-natured stuff that fails only in not attempting to do more than tell a tale with just enough charm to keep you from wondering why you aren’t simply reading the original on your own -- or, less temptingly, watching one of the old movies on DVD.

At home in his study (which oddly resembles a Boy Scouts’ den in William Forrester’s stage re-creation), Holmes (Mark Capri) awaits his faithful Watson (Victor Talmadge) for what he believes will be (drum roll, please) the last episode in his illustrious career. At stake this time is the marital fate of the king of Bohemia (Preston Maybank, goofily attired in epaulets), who is being blackmailed by his old flame Irene Adler (Libby West), an opera diva who’s gullible in romance yet wickedly calculating when betrayed.

The diabolic force behind Irene’s attempted extortion is none other than the malevolent Professor Moriarty (Laurence Ballard), Holmes’ formidable intellectual rival and the demon he fears will bring his investigative enterprise to an unceremonious end.

A few modern touches superficially update the scene. Dietz theatrically draws out Holmes’ dependence on drugs (early on we see him mainlining a dose of cocaine), but the play doesn’t bother to illuminate the discrepancy between the hyper-rationality of the public man and the addictive irrationality of the private. Nor does it connect Holmes’ seemingly suicidal embrace of his “final chapter” with the budding tenderness he feels toward a woman who may be an even more astute observer of human activity. Is this eccentrically likable know-it-all unable to tolerate the vulnerability of love?

There are, in short, a number of leads that Dietz could have pursued that would have opened a new perspective on the inner workings of a character whose genius doesn’t completely eclipse his arrogance, snobbery and, in matters unrelated to criminality, willful shortsightedness. But the play sticks unimaginatively to the traditional formula, an approach that for once Holmes would be justified in calling “elementary.”

The actors present less a gallery of familiar characters than a series of mildly engaging masks. Everything is writ large, often comically so. Capri, adorned with a Victorian cloak, deerstalker cap and curved pipe, looks the part even if he sometimes sounds like an elocution teacher at a retro drama school. But to give credit where credit’s due, it’s a crowd-pleasing turn, not unlike one of those memorable impersonations at a historical theme park.

Kudos to Talmadge for bringing quiet dignity to Watson. If all of the performances were on his level, the production might not seem so adrift.

As Irene, the dangerously smart soprano with the mushy heart, West isn’t too far off. Ballard infuses Moriarty with villainous wit, though he has this strange habit of transforming into Lou Costello whenever he has to holler at one of his numb-skull flunkies. The supporting players lend little more than comic-strip color.

Lacking any real artistic initiative, “The Final Adventure” seems like an offering in adult summer camp. All that’s needed are a few hundred pairs of slippers and some warm milk to make the experience feel complete.

*

‘Sherlock Holmes’

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: June 11

Price: $38 to $60

Contact: (626) 356-PLAY or www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

Running Time: 2 hours

Written by Steven Dietz. Directed by David Ira Goldstein. Sets by William Forrester. Costumes by David K. Mickelsen. Lights by Dennis Parichy. Sound by Brian Jerome Peterson. Composer Roberta Carlson. Production stage manager Conwell Worthington III