Eating Lewis for breakfast

Steven Alan Green's monologue is a treat for those who attended the disastrous 2002 charity show he organised. The many millions who couldn't make it that night will have to work harder to get involved.

Having done two High On Laughter benefits in Edinburgh, the American comic booked the London Palladium for his third. He needed a star to lure US TV - so he asked an ailing Jerry Lewis to top the bill.

Big mistake. Lewis was demanding and capricious. And Green overestimated the septuagenarian star's pulling power - the venue was barely half full.

At about 11pm, after seemingly dozens of comics had done their

turns, Lewis collapsed in the wings before going on. He was put in an ambulance that sped him straight to his hotel.

Now Green, poorer but wiser, enlisted co-writer John Dowie and director Ben De Wynter to help him turn a disaster into a show.

Well, sort of: the first half is a trawl through Green's early life and career that would work better intermingled with details of the Lewis incident.

Green, despite being a comic of two decades' standing, is at his strongest when not straining to be funny. But, in its second half particularly, it's an effective story of fortitude in the face of fiasco.

Suns until June 20, New End Theatre, New End NW3, 7.30pm, £10, £8 concs. Tel: 020 7794 0022. Tube: Hampstead