Passive attack

It starts brilliantly. Tiernan is one of the best technicians in the business, a performer with a genial urgency that makes other comics seem amateurish.

He goes smoothly from comparing Aussie and African priests - the former's laid-back tones no match for the latter's animation - to knocking Protestants, Catholics, Israel... everyone, really.

But oh so charmingly.

Tiernan is consumed by his task - appropriately enough, for a show about our need to triumph over adulthood's strictures. Loose-limbed, laughing, yet keeping to a tight structure, he skewers Japan's post-war technological supremacy - simply a way of keeping Westeners too entertained to ever attack them again. His impatience with passivity is contagious.

But the show shifts down a gear when Tiernan focuses on his childhood. It's still delivered with aplomb, but it feels regressive. The present-tense stuff has a sense of discovery about it that makes stories about the monastery seem like a comfort blanket.

Tiernan, who won the Perrier Award in 1998, is an original thinker and a master storyteller. This is an inventive, fast-paced

show that always entertains. But only when he backs himself to choose a narrower theme and take it to its limit will he fulfil his enormous potential.

Until Nov 1, New Ambassadors Theatre, West Street WC2, Thu and Fri 10pm, £15. Tel: 020 7836 6111. Tube: Leicester Square