MR Henry Dimmell and Mrs Rose Dimmell's world-renowned Victorian Travelling Theatre Company is presenting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes in The Hound Of The Baskervilles...in the £6million redeveloped York Theatre Royal.

Never heard of the Dimmells? Panic not, as played by David Leonard and Joanna Holden, they are all part of the very theatrical conceit for the Theatre Royal's now traditional family show for the summer holiday.

Ironically, for all that 21st century expenditure, Damian Cruden's uneven production harks back to the earlier days of travelling players, actor managers, Victorian melodramas, music-hall acts, shadow puppetry, foley artists for sound effects and lots of songs in music-hall mode by Rob Castell. Albeit that the redevelopment now allows for trapdoors and scenery disappearing through the floor.

What ensues is a devised marriage of theatre's past and present: on the one hand a parade of its abiding distinguishing features; on the other, a certain archness in doing so, as Cruden, writer Richard Hurford and a cast of actor-musicians veer into the knowing musical theatre styles of Kneehigh, the cult cabaret trio The Tiger Lillies and anarchic humorists Peepolykus.

What's more, we are in the age of gender-fluid casting, as we were for Brideshead Revisited this spring, where the tall woman with the moustache, long hair and full-length dress is Dr John Watson, I presume? You presume correctly, and Dr Watson is still referred to as "he" at all times despite being played by the splendid Elexi Walker.

Elementary? Well, yes, once you become accustomed to his/her ways, athleticism and light operatic singing and the way he/she becomes the junior, almost novice, partner in the relationship with Leonard's immaculate, dapper Sherlock.

Designer Mark Walters, who will return for his second Berwick Kaler pantomime this winter, has created a stage within the stage, a kind of industrial steampunk creation with jutting angles, screens for shadow-play and steps leading down to the piano. In keeping with Cruden's direction, it is a celebration of theatre's playfulness, as is the sight of Rachel Dawson's "Butterfly Beryl" playing the cello high up in a hoop, while Ed Thorpe's trumpet is sublime.

What of the haunting, harrowing story of The Hound Of The Baskervilles in this cornucopia of theatricality, where on press night, the company pushed a little too hard for comedy and some parts, mainly those involving Rob Castell's vaudevillian Sir Henry Baskerville and Holden's narrator, the persistent tea-maker Mrs Hudson, worked better than others?

The haunting and the harrowing rather take a back seat, except in the guiding presence of pantomime villain Leonard's elegant, eloquent, serious Holmes, a Holmes who doesn't play the violin but sings delightfully, smokes a pipe but not drugs. It is a family show, after all, as Baskerville meets vaudeville.

Sherlock Holmes: The Hound Of The Baskervilles, York Theatre Royal, until August 27. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk