"Generally, the French Revolution is not the way entertainment is going," says Mark Steel. Much as I enjoyed seeing the radical past plundered for comedy, this is history for the MTV generation. Based on his book Vive La Revolution!, the show presents a precis of 1789 and its consequences. Steel must have low expectations of our familiarity with the story because he studs the revolutionary narrative with popularising touches ("there was this bloke called Danton...") and keeps cutting - as if by malfunctioning guillotine - to chunks of 21st-century stand-up.
If the man-of-the-people shtick can get wearing, there is a point to it, which is Steel's complaint that "everyone has to be posh" to be credited with changing the world. That is why he likes the French Revolution, because it proves that people can make history whether they have got culottes or not. I would have preferred a keener focus on this story, but Steel keeps the history lite, with restless diversions: Tom Paine's refusal to learn French when sitting in the revolutionary parliament, for example, devolves into a skit about the English abroad.
At least the up-to-date material is radical: he attacks angsty middle-class parents for sending their kids to fee-paying schools and rubbishes the argument that the royal family are good for tourism - as if visitors to the Eiffel Tower say: "It's not a bad view, but the lack of a monarch spoils it somehow." Putting his money where his democratising mouth is, Steel even tailors the set to the local audience, and discusses Sheffield's role in the revolution. The show may not be a far, far better thing than he has ever done, but next to the daily bread of most stand-up, Citizen Steel lets us eat cake.
· At Reading Concert Hall on Friday. Box office: 0118 960 6060. Then touring.
