David Arquette's 'Sherlock Holmes' proves utterly clueless

There are many baffling mysteries tied to the national tour of "Sherlock Holmes" with "Scream" star David Arquette in the title role. The biggest question, however, isn't who killed whom. Rather, it's how in the world this woefully misbegotten stage production made it far enough to play Chicago's Oriental Theatre.

"Sherlock Holmes" suffers from a number of casting misfires and so many muddled directorial decisions that you wonder just what the producers of the tour were hoping to achieve by mounting it. If they wanted to cash in on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ever-popular fictional British detective, then they should have found a script that was better tailored to their marquee star rather than the painful mismatch here.

Arquette plays the title role with a bemused "look at me, I'm clever" haughtiness that could have worked if the play's tone was geared entirely toward a comical lampooning of Holmes or stage thriller conventions in general. But the overstuffed 2013 script by the late British-Canadian actor/playwright Greg Kramer plays things fairly straight, so it's tough to buy that Arquette and his forced British accent could believably exist in Victorian London.

Also at sea are Arquette's above-the-title co-stars James Maslow as Holmes' sidekick Dr. Watson and Renee Olstead as American client Lady Irene St. John, whose request to rescue her kidnapped wealthy husband ultimately drives the plot. The two come off more like they were cast for their youthful good looks and past TV credits - Maslow in "Big Time Rush" and Olstead in "Still Standing" - than their ability to honestly inhabit their characters.

Director Andrew Shaver's approach to the material is all over the place, and his stabs at physical humor fall short. There is no proper sense of time and place, and the drug-induced sequences with blaring techno music and jagged robotic choreography are particularly incongruous.

Other members of the ensemble, many of whom appeared in the original Montreal production, work hard at playing supporting characters. But without a strong director at the helm, their performances often feel forced and rudderless.

"Sherlock Holmes" also suffers from a rather dreary production design by James Lavoie that relies a bit too much on grainy monochrome projections on shifting metal mesh panels. There's just not enough spectacle to properly fill a big stage like the Oriental's.

If "Sherlock Holmes" had been staged on a smaller scale without stars attached and with a more comic approach, it might have found success in a vein similar to the hit "The 39 Steps." As it is, this bloated "Sherlock Holmes" doesn't have a clue.