"What," asks Paul Hull at the start of this show, "is a stocky, brown-haired, lapsed Methodist from the Welsh valleys doing impersonating a tall, good-looking Jewish entertainer like Danny Kaye?" Two hours and 24 songs later I was still waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the answer.
I guess what Mr Hull is doing is indulging in the favourite showbiz sport of necrophilia. In an age lacking in eccentric personalities, people now spend all their time resurrecting the great entertainers of the past: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Tommy Cooper, Philip Larkin. Here in a show somewhat parsimoniously scripted by Tony Hare, it is the turn of Danny Kaye.
But the more conscientiously Mr Hull tries to recreate his subject, the more you realise he was virtually inimitable. Kaye's forte lay in delivering densely packed lyrics with frenzied articulation: most famously in a number from Lady in the Dark where he reeled off the names of 100 Russian composers in 38 seconds. Bravely, Mr Hull attempts this but when he does it one is reminded less of Gershwin and Weill than of Gilbert and Sullivan.
He also essays Anatole of Paris - a song about a precious male milliner - but where Kaye endowed it with a delicate female fastidiousness Mr Hull simply turns it into an exercise in camp. The sadness of Kaye was that he turned from zany vaudevillian into harmless family entertainer, most conspicuously in Hans Christian Andersen.
But it is when the amiable Mr Hull seeks to recreate Kaye's easy charm that he is at his best: his medley of Frank Loesser numbers from the film has the audience involuntarily joining in, although my attention was distracted by the strange description of Wonderful Copenhagen as "salty old queen of the sea".
For the rest Sarah Elliott dances prettily and Colin Billing accompanies the songs with zest. But what was the point of trying to recreate Kaye's gift for riddleme-ree gibberish and wild Slav accents when videos and records give us the original. Sadly the one person in Britain who could imitate Kaye, Jonathan Miller, is unlikely to volunteer.
· Until March 4. Box office: 020-7794 0022.
