Rock and troll

TV fame and a sterling live reputation have combined to make Bill Bailey a sensation. He quickly sold out the first week of this West End run, and for once the second week has genuinely been added due to demand.

See him and you'll have a great time. He's charming, weird, witty, ingenious with hecklers and a masterful musical mimic.

His parody of Portishead doing Zip A Dee Doo Dah may be ten years off the pace, but the details are so right it doesn't matter. He engages with everything from the Terminator to Third World debt with a sense of play.

And yet Part Troll doesn't entirely hang together. Partly it's because Bailey doesn't develop a strong theme about Britain's culture of fatigue.

Some fantastic sequences - a disastrous swimming-with-dolphins session; Three Times A Lady in German - gather together rather than build. Music is his strongest suit, but he underplays it.

And those who saw his last show, Bewilderness, will recognise slightly too much here. 'Have you got any new material?', cried one punter.

Part Troll is mostly delightful. But Bailey needs a tighter structure to make the most of his abundant talent.

Until Oct 25, Wyndhams Theatre, Charing Cross Road WC2, daily 8pm (no perf Sun or Tue), Sat mat 3pm, £10 to £38.50 (limited availability).

Tel: 020 7369 1736. Tube: Leicester Square

Bill Bailey: Part Troll