Vonniget misses an easy target

Rock's rich tapestry has recently provided comedy with a vivid source of humour. There has been embittered wannabe Brian Appleton, embattled new romantic Gary Le Strange and last year's gag-packed musical The Next Big Thing. Latest fictional nearly man Deon Vonniget adds little to a vein strip-mined of every giggle.

Vonniget, alias Footlights alumnus James Lark, slogs through all the well-trodden genre parodies. While in Pink Floyd he wrote Dark Side Of The Moonlight Sonata complete with kazoo solo before he was expelled for going mad. There follows a dodgy punk period, a dubious drag artist era and a spurious audience-embarrassing, speed-dating serenade.

Some of Lark's compositions boast nice couplets. Deon's defining anthem is power ballad Cheese: "I gave her my Double Gloucester/Cheshire, Emmental and lost her." But too many elements of this pastiche-cumparable are painfully predictable or not funny enough. A decent TS Eliot gag, reworking The Hollow Men as a pop ditty, picks up the pace, but overall Lark performs with handsome conviction that his material does not deserve.

There is a good 15-minute sketch, poking fun at Andrew Lloyd Webber with the aid of canine glove puppets and a ventriloquist's dummy, but it currently lurks within a turgid hour that throws plenty at the comedy wall in the hope that something will stick. Sadly not much does. There is a lot more fall than rise at the moment.

Also 7 March (020 7289 6054).

The Rise And Fall Of Deon Vonniget