Tony! The Blair Musical

On one hand, there's no shortage of source material for a musical about the past decade in British politics. On the other, it's no mean feat coming up with fresh jokes about figures who have for so long been the prime targets of every other satirist in the country.

Chris Bush, writer and director of Tony! The Blair Musical, has perhaps wisely side-stepped this problem by creating a daft and soft-centred musical revue that almost manages to avoid politics altogether.

Instead, this is the story of an ambitious but well-meaning Labour party frontman who let fame and celebrity go to his head, and lost all of those closest to him in the process. 'There's no 'I' in team,' lament Cherie, Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell in turn, 'and there's no 'Me' in Tony'.

James Duckworth is great in the title role, retaining Blair's speech-making mannerisms even when rocking out in an acutely embarrassing fashion. He is ably supported by his five castmates, including Alex Stevens as an infantile George W and Michael Slater as an increasingly bitter Gordon Brown.

It's disappointing to see Peter Mandelson portrayed as a two-dimensional sexual predator, particularly when Prescott somehow manages to escape similarly lazy stereotyping, but the trump card of this production is surely Ed Duncan Smith, who plays his father Iain (briefly, as part of a barbershop quartet of former Tory leaders) as well as a vaguely Simon Cowell-esque Campbell.

Music-wise there's nothing particularly innovative going on here. Manilow's Mandy gets an airing and the show's own gut-busting ballad gets one reprise too many, but Tony is grilled on TV to an insistent rock number pleasingly reminiscent of Little Shop of Horrors - the chorus led not by a man-eating plant, but by Jeremy Paxman.