Rufus Wainwright, Union Chapel, London, ****

Songs of love and mischief

The insatiably camp Rufus Wainwright is a sight to behold. His trousers alone are enough to make your eyes water: pink-and-white candy-striped numbers, they hug his behind like clingfilm. Then there's the tight-fitting shirt that perfectly shows off his lean torso. As he arrives on stage for his first British show in nearly five years and surveys the crowd, Wainwright radiates mischief.

Alternating between the piano and an acoustic guitar, he's in glorious voice. As well as drawing on his parents' back catalogue, his songs come with sidelong winks to his heroes Bernstein and Gershwin. "Foolish Love" is an eerie elegy about the transitory nature of love, which halfway through morphs into a thigh-slapping show tune.

A large part of the set revolves around last year's underrated album Poses. "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" is a wonderful ode to decadence and desire, while "California", a song about kicking up your heels and staying in bed on the West Coast, bathes us in sunshine. Wainwright chats idly in between songs about his new album – "The themes are death, sex and religion" – his stay in London and the perils of being a gay toddler. Things take a darker turn as he tells us about the time he excitedly confessed to Bea Arthur, one of the stars of the television series The Golden Girls, about how he imagined her to be his grandmother. "I'm not your grandmother!" she snapped.

Wainwright's parents creep into many of his songs. "I may not be so manly. But I know you still love me" he croons in the coming-of-age number "Beauty Mark"; in "Want", the title song from his not-quite-finished third album, the spectre of his father looms large. The new songs are both messy and sublime. Wainwright puts his all into the opening lines of "Pretty Things" but then forgets the words.

Heaving a tragic sigh, he moves on to "Beautiful Child", a song you can only presume was named after its author. "One time I sang this and I swear the moon turned red," he says by way of introduction, and after hearing it you almost believe him. It's a heart-breaking song, yet another that marks Wainwright as one America's most unique and criminally neglected songwriters.

Rufus Wainwright plays the Lyric Hammersmith, London W6 (08700 500 511) on Tuesday