When a show that opens in early October features a nativity sequence, you know it's in for the long haul. The Fast Show's festive nods may serve it well when its tour ends in December. For now, they remind us of the scale of this operation: 60 dates in 20 arenas over three months. That imposes a fair few constraints - "It's hard," co-writer Charlie Higson told this paper a fortnight ago, "to be too subtle on tour" - but the team behind the hit, if hit-and-miss, 1990s sketch show make a decent fist of translating its instantly recognisable characters to the stage.
Five of the seven-strong original line-up are present: Higson, Mark Williams, Arabella Weir, Simon Day and Paul Whitehouse, who plays to a crowd as skilfully as he does to a camera. Their show sometimes struggles to keep pace with its restlessly edited TV forebear. Most of The Fast Show's dramatis personae are one-trick ponies: their stage life can be measured in seconds, not minutes. Several appear for only as long as it takes to walk (or, in one case, swing) across the stage. Others, such as Whitehouse's cockney crook Chris Jackson, overstay their welcome in underwritten sketches. Never underestimate, however, the simple pleasure of meeting old friends: every character is cheered to the rafters by an affectionate Portsmouth crowd.
The staging is more reminiscent of the theatre than television - panto backdrops, two gilt-edged royal boxes on stage - and some of the characters get the full theatrical treatment. The hilarious music-hall patter of Whitehouse's Arthur "Where's me washboard?" Atkinson, who here stars in a deftly observed 1940s-style radio comedy, is in any case tailor-made for the live arena. Higson's Bob Fleming and friends supply percussion to the folk song Wild Rover in the form of coughs, sneezes and compulsive cries of "arse". A highlight of the evening is the Lloyd-Webberish showstopper in which Ralph the toff croons his love for Ted the taciturn gardener. Higson's Ralph even has a staircase to skip up and down.
There are faint disappointments. Higson's terrific office joker Colin Hunt is neutralised by being made to volunteer for an open-mike comedy slot: performing publicly rather than privately, he is reduced to just another spoof bad stand-up. And why the team have employed two bikini-clad women is anyone's guess. But, at its best, the evening is almost vaudevillian - a mantle that the lovable, unchallenging Fast Show wears well. Live performance? Suits you, sir.
· At Birmingham National Indoor Arena tonight and tomorrow. Box office: 0121-780 4444. Then touring to Sheffield, Glasgow, Aberdeen and across the UK.
