First Night: Zipp! The Duchess Theatre, London

Zipp! isn't painful – but it is pretty pointless

A show that promises "100 musicals for less than the price of one," Zipp!, says its author and star, Gyles Brandreth, will please people who love musicals or hate them – the former will appreciate the subject, the latter the speed. Actually,Zipp! is designed for an audience who view this art form with affable condescension.

English theatre-goers don't care much for wit in musicals – witness the short runs of such wonderful shows as City of Angels or The Full Monty and the success of woeful ones with dazzling lights and exotic machinery. It's not surprisingly, then, that Zipp! is aimed at those with no special knowledge of musicals.

Compared with the long-running New York satirical revue Forbidden Broadway, Zipp! is embarrassingly low in ingenuity and ambition. Most of the songs are not altered or even used to make a point, simply grouped in categories. Comparison, though, is hardly necessary when the jokes are on this level. In a segment asking what if a composer other than Stephen Sondheim had written Sweeney Todd, "June is Bustin' out all Over" from Carousel is altered to "Blood is Spurting out all Over". Brandreth refers to his "first wife'', to whom he's still married – "I just call her that to keep her on her toes''.

As that last wisecrack makes clear, the real home for this sort of this material is the after-dinner speech, and Brandreth doesn't disappoint those who like their humour hearty but clean. A man in a dress always sets these types off, so Brandreth appears as Dolly and Mame, and, for good measure, in a suspender belt and stockings. A man sings "Younger Than Springtime" to him instead of to a woman, and Brandreth makes various worried faces.

While he certainly has presence there is something menacing about him and all his teeth.

Like Andrew C Wadsworth, the two female singers have fine voices, but, while he is po-faced and droll, they radiate the self-love that this kind of show should parody, not replicate. Zipp! is not painful, but it's pretty pointless, at least in this form. It really should start three hours later, and the ticket price should include a bottle of champagne and a donation to the stupid party.