SO many reasons abound for wanting The Last Train To Scarborough to be a chuffing good show.

It is part of the Yorkshire Festival for le Grand Depart; the original book was written by York detective storyteller Andrew Martin; the National Railway Museum is the SJT's associate (as it was for York Theatre Royal's award-winning The Railway Children); the cast has Yorkshire theatre pedigree; Scarborough is in the title; and don't we all love old trains and detective stories, especially when the locations are Scarborough and York?

Above all, Stephen Joseph Theatre artistic director Chris Monks could really do with a big new hit of his own at a theatre where Alan Ayckbourn is still the king.

This isn't it, alas, even though he has thrown everything including the kitchen sink – or multi-media imagery, to give its modish name – at his own adaptation.

On the one hand, he maintains the Edwardian language, dark humour and abundant detail of Martin's crime thriller spun around York railway copper Detective Sergeant Jim Stringer (Matthew Booth); on the other, he introduces Jonny Walton and Paul Stear's fast-edited video footage on the floor for film-noir atmosphere.

This is accompanied by Beverley Norris Edmunds's slow-motion choreography and Stear's dissonant sound effects for scene changes; the intention being to mirror the agitated state of Stringer's mind on the cusp of turning 30 on his return to Yorkshire with his London wife Lydia (Jennifer Bryden). Richard Atkinson's music then adds its own commentary to each scene.

A case can be argued that multi-media risks weakening theatre as much as strengthening it, and aside from the opening scene where Booth's Stringer is tossed around by the cast in a blanket with a criss-crossing pattern of film footage, it is too much of a distracting gimmick, rather than an aid to creating tension.

Theatre-in-the-round is a natural coliseum for a thriller: the sense that you can't escape until the case is solved, and so Monks could have trusted the innate powers of such a building, the design skills of Tim Meacock and the potency of Martin's storytelling.

Stringer has been sent undercover to the East Coast, in the guise of a railway worker, to investigate the disappearance of railway fireman Ray Blackburn, who had fired up the last train to Scarborough before his night at The Paradise Guest House turned into Paradise lost.

Under suspicion are beautiful but addled proprietor Amanda Rickerby (Bryden); her brain-damaged, brusque brother Adam (Liam Evans-Ford in a comic tour de force); cultured, if mysterious, bon-viveur Howard Fielding (Steve Huison) and his lecherous associate Theo Vaughan (Andy Cryer).

Myriad characters weave in and out of a story that zigs backwards and forwards in pursuit of mystery, but instead derails the play's journey through over-elaboration. It is not quite like leaving a drunkard in charge of Crewe station, yet it is difficult to maintain your train of thought when a more straightforward account would have achieved better results.

The comedy, northern and brittle, works best and Booth reaffirms what a supreme everyman actor he is, but disappointingly that is not enough.

The Last Train To Scarborough, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until Saturday. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com