Five years after Mel Brooks' comedy musical arrived on Broadway and won fistfuls of Tonys, and 18 months after its triumphant London premiere, I get to see what all the fuss has been about and find myself a touch bemused. It is quite good. Or let's put it another way, it's no better than it should be for an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza that has had squillions of pounds and shed-loads of talent lobbed in its direction.
There's so much bling that it's easy to fail to notice that the staging is unexciting, owing more to design solutions than creative ideas, and though it goosesteps strenuously to put the camp into Mein Kampf, all the bad taste jokes are in predictable good taste. Until the show-stopping Springtime for Hitler sequence, it is all rather tame. I found myself suffering from comic constipation: wanting to laugh far more than I actually did. There has been a cast change, but I don't think that accounts for my disappointment.
Cory English as the wily, disreputable Broadway producer Max Bialystock, who sees a way of making a fortune by producing the biggest flop in theatrical history, and Reece Shearsmith as Leopold Bloom, the goofy accountant with stars in his eyes, are both excellent. Shearsmith, one quarter of The League of Gentlemen, not only captures Bloom's vulnerability but also demonstrates a real gift for physical comedy. I shall long cherish the sight of the dwarfish Shearsmith's nose balanced on the embonpoint of the statuesque Swedish beauty, Ulla (Rachel McDowell).
But although there are moments of real invention - including a zimmer frame tap dance - the show's retro pastiche always makes it an exercise in nostalgia with a nod to musicals of the past not the future, and although the gags come fast and furious an awful lot of them miss their target completely. It is a huge well-oiled juggernaut of a West End show, big on brass and brash, but low on charm and spontaneity.
· Until January 6, 2007. Box office: 0870 890 1109.
