Writer, director and actor Christopher Samuel Carroll says his one-man play Early Grave, Fashionably Late is "a cross between a Sherlock Holmes detective story, a Jules Verne adventure and an Oscar Wilde comedy".

In this "homage to the late 19th century and all things Victorian", he plays Bennett Cooper Sullivan, a gentleman adventurer in the mould of Ernest Shackleton and Richard Burton, "the great 19th-century explorers who went on those courageous but often suicidally idiotic expeditions ... all for the sake of the adventure".

But these journeys cost money, and while Sullivan's vocation might be exploring, his profession is as a raconteur, regaling drawing-rooms full of well-heeled folk with stories of his daring exploits in exotic and dangerous locales in order to finance the next undertaking by enticing them to cough up some cash.

But during one such session in a Dublin drawing room in 1889, he becomes the accidental witness to a mysterious murder and embarks upon a somewhat different adventure to the one he expected.

"He sets out a reluctant detective but can't help hurtling himself in danger's way," Carroll says. And he finds himself in a very different world from the gilded drawing room of society dowagers; one full of corruption and blackmail and scandal and the ever-present threat of death.

The Irish-born Carroll, 31, studied drama at Trinity College, Dublin, and is also a graduate of the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq, Paris. Through his company, Bare Witness, he has produced solo and ensemble work in Dublin, Paris, and other cities. He came to Canberra to spend the year with his Australian partner, Hannah Cormick, and has acted in a couple of plays here: Gorman Arts Centre's Anthems and Angels: The Compassion Plays and Everyman Theatre's production of The Normal Heart.

Early Grave, Fashionably Late debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2015 and was then seen at the Wexford Spiegeltent Festival. It's the first of his plays he's produced in Australia and will come to Smith's Alternative for one night only following a week-long run at The Butterfly Club in Melbourne.

Carroll says he rewrote the show – originally about 75 minutes long – for its Butterfly Club season, tightening the play to just under an hour and changing the ending.

"The last quarter is extensively rewritten – it's much better in terms of story," he says.