UNTIL APRIL 30 2005, BATH: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is a curious short story by the marvellous Oscar Wilde, about fate, predestination and the marvellously funny way the upper classes behave.

Both light and dark, witty and profound, it is a strange, graceful story imbued with Wilde's admirable lightness of touch, eye for beauty and wry observations of human folly.

Trevor Baxter's adaptation of the story, running until Saturday, has taken the bones of Wilde's story and used it to create a Victorian melodrama. As the programme points out, while melodrama is now a term of critical abuse, it was a legitimate

theatrical form in the Victorian era.

As the play opens a young man sets a taper to the footlights, the elegant Mr Tom Jude and Miss Elisa Boyd take up their places to play piano and violin respectively, and a footman reveals titles for each scene, displayed on an easel The Battle of the Sexes, one proclaims and Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow.

Even the programme is a pastiche with the Metropolitan Artistes afforded sub titles (Russ Abbott Doyen of the Drama, Gay Lambert Vocaliste Superbe) and patrons are requested not to spit on the floor but to use the spittoon (unfortunately I couldn't find mine).

The set was a triumph. A two-dimensional theatre was set up on stage, complete with beautifully decorated proscenium arch and a host of painted backcloths to transport the action to different scenes.

Young aristocrat Lord Arthur, played by John Sackville, is betrothed to Sybil Merton, played by Sara Crowe, but fortune teller Septimus Podgers (Russ Abbott) reads his palm and warns Lord Arthur he is destined to commit a murder.

Poor Lord Arthur is so worried he'll accidentally murder his beloved Sybil he decides to put off the wedding and murder someone else to get this terrible destiny out of the way. Mayhem ensues as he tries to bump off elderly relatives, before he finally decides on a more satisfactory course of action.

The cast do their best and John Sackville does a creditable job as Lord Arthur ably supported by Gay Lambert as Lady Clementina and Royce Mills as the Dean of Chichester but the tone of the play just doesn't seem to work.

Russ Abbott, having abandoned the kilt and red wig of his earlier comic incarnation, is also competent as the bogus fortune teller.

But Wilde didn't write melodramas and his particular line in witty and elegant dialogue does not sit easily in the frame of a melodrama.

In short a wonderful idea, a delight of a set and some talented actors but the play just didn't work for me.

Sarah Singleton