JAKE Swift, private investigator - a guy so cool his cigarettes hit his lips already lit and smouldering. No nerdy fumbling with matches while chill winds gust down the inevitable mean street, then.

But for all that he acts cooler than Aspen in high season, Jake's suit is far and away sharper than him. Because if Jake was even half-roads to being smart he wouldn't end up, literally, in the lap of one corpse, and with the serious hots for a girl who is infected with a deadly virus . . .

But we're in Chandlerville, where even the sidewalks make witty cracks. Any case Jake takes is bound to make him a fall-guy - preferably from a great height. Which is where KAOS Theatre come, absolutely, into their own as a physical

theatre company of ready invention and considerable expertise.

For even as the dialogue is scaling the heights of nicely-judged genre spoof - embracing not just low-life detective fiction and film noir but also crazed scientists who dabble in human cloning - the cast are flinging themselves, headlong, into violent encounters in a hall of mirrors, or executing madcap chases along seemingly endless corridors. It's hard to believe that all this dodging and pursuing - involving several different characters and various locales - is achieved by a cast of four and two portable doors.

My only quibble is that, while the energy is unstinting, the plot seems to run out of steam, stopping short rather than paying off. But the whole production is so alive with entertaining detail, and is so thoroughly well done - by a cast of four excellent new recruits to KAOS - that one cheerfully accepts it as the ultimate in unexpected dead ends.