Chris Lynam - The Popcorn Club, Soho Theatre, London

In the blurb about Chris Lynam's comeback, his disappearance from the circuit is explained: "In 1995, disaffected by the industry, Chris left the circuit and disappeared to the Zimbabwean rainforest, where he became a lumberjack and restored 1,500 acres of rainforest."

In the blurb about Chris Lynam's comeback, his disappearance from the circuit is explained: "In 1995, disaffected by the industry, Chris left the circuit and disappeared to the Zimbabwean rainforest, where he became a lumberjack and restored 1,500 acres of rainforest." It reads rather like a joke biography. But this is Lynam, and it's true.

In a fortnight at the Soho Theatre, two decades of the "anarchic clown" Lynam's work, either side of the rainforest hiatus, have been in the spotlight. In the first week, a reprise of Beast of Theatre saw Lynam do his trademark gag of putting a firework between his clenched buttocks. In the second week, the vaudevillian The Popcorn Club, co-starring Kate McKenzie, with musical direction by Josie Lawrence, shows us how Lynam has moved on.

The answer to that is - not that much. It is hardly surprising that an act born on the streets (in theatrical terms) has stayed there and that the loosely connected parade of slapstick gags feels more at home outside or in a club environment than in a theatre. However, The Popcorn Club, hung around the fractious romance of performers Eric and Estelle Etolie, doesn't even have the saving grace of Beast's preposterous one-liners ("You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it wash up") or visual gags, like an Eskimo taking a shower with Lynam throwing ice cubes over him. When you're being nostalgic about such gags, you know something's amiss.

What we do get is McKenzie taking us through the musical range with an opening of Buster Poindexter's party classic (if not a hit), "Feelin' Hot Hot Hot" to excepts from Carmen. Meanwhile, Lynam plods through many guises: a magician who destroys a mobile phone rather than make it disappear, a Russian acrobat who finds that his see-saw act has been sabotaged. There's a bit of ballet from two men in tutus. Lynam's audience participant happened to be comedian Andrew Clover, who looked as bemused as the rest of us.

When Eric and Estelle are together there's some cooing, nipple- and nose-tweaking to "Baby, it's cold outside" or some nonsense wordplay: "Your thighs are like my cries in the dark night," she says, which prompts an equally absurd response. Lynam remains childlike and engaging, but it does all come down to buttocks - how hard the audience are clenching theirs and what he's doing with his.

Ends tomorrow (0870 429 6883)