"Remember," intones an announcement halfway through Armstrong and Miller's new show, "if it's not funny, it's probably clever." More often it's neither, on an accident-prone first night of the primetime pair's first live tour in nine years. Projectors fail, entrances are fluffed, and director Sean Foley is summoned to apologise. But the show's worst sin isn't technical ineptitude, it's the laziness of the jokes and the anvil touch with which Armstrong and Miller deploy them.
Fifteen writers are credited on the show – which proves that quantity doesn't guarantee quality. Sketch after sketch comes and goes with scarcely a spark of novelty. We meet two sex shop proprietors, and are invited to laugh at dildos. A mincing royal correspondent makes lewd remarks about the BBC's Jennie Bond. There's a scene in which a dimwit can't see he's being cuckolded. Imagine Les Dawson's routines performed by two branch managers at your local Bradford & Bingley. Even the slapstick is duffly orchestrated.
The duo's rustiness at live performance doesn't help; confident comics would make hay with the near-collapse of tonight's show, but these two, understandably, seem uncomfortable. Ben Miller comes closest to enlivening proceedings – his wacky divorcee Jilted Jim has anarchic charm. And the quiz-show spoof How Many Hats? has an absurdist appeal. But just as their most popular characters are second world war pilots who talk in 21st-century street slang, so tonight's show feels like comedy performed in the voice of two men who aren't particularly funny.
• At the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham (0115-989 5555), tonight. Then touring.
