There may be no business like show business, but there is no showman who is more of a show-off than ex-Tory MP Gyles Brandreth. His 90 minutes of frothy entertainment does for the musical what the Reduced Shakespeare Company did for the Bard.
While other former Tory MPs do the non-stop prison show (Aitken and Archer) or pantomime (Neil and Christine Hamilton), Brandreth gets to do pocket-sized versions of The Rocky Horror Show, La Cage aux Folles and Starlight Express, shamelessly camping it up in suspenders and stockings like a real pro - or the average Tory MP.
Brandreth's masterstroke is to have realised that, having had a good idea, he is best off leaving its execution to the professionals while he totters around on the sidelines squeezing into Dorothy frocks complete with Toto accessory. Andrew C Wadsworth, Stuart Barr, Amanda Symonds and CJ Johnson can - unlike Brandreth-really sing.
They are great when they are belting them out, although they spend too much time indulging Brandreth, who does not always know the difference between wit and sneer. But the show begins to zip along when they leave him to the dressing up and get down to the real business of working their way through 100 musicals in just 90 minutes (including the entire work of Andrew Lloyd Webber in under a minute). You have no idea what a work of genius Phantom of the Opera seems when it lasts just a millisecond.
The great thing about this show is that it panders to those who love and those who loathe musical theatre. It is constructed cunningly enough to allow those who sway that way to enjoy the tunes they long to hear, while offering those who hate the form the reassuring knowledge that they will never be under the slightest obligation to sit through three hours of Les Miserables. They will be able to say, quite truthfully: "Oh, I've seen that."
It is also democratic, putting the well known and obscure, the high- and low-brow, on an equal footing and not subscribing to the snobbery that makes it OK to like Sondheim but not to enjoy a single note of Lloyd Webber.
This is a fluffy show, but it is exactly where it deserves to be: in London's West End. It will not harm anyone and it will make a lot of people very happy.
· Until July 26. Box office: 0870 890 1103
