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- The Guardian, Friday 10 February 2006 09.24 GMT
The Mighty Boosh embark on their first ever UK tour laden with acclaim for their cultish TV show. And the winning telly formula is intact tonight, as glam-rock tart Vince Noir (Noel Fielding), lugubrious Howard Moon (Julian Barratt) and sidekicks Naboo and Bollo undertake a quest for a long-lost ruby amid much pop surrealism and studenty banter. But, whereas the anything-goes playfulness of the Boosh imagination is refreshing on TV, theatregoers have seen this all before - not least in panto, which the show often resembles.
The enjoyment it affords may hinge on your tolerance of surrealism-lite. If, five minutes in, you're laughing when Howard says, "I'll go and check on that quiche," and Vince tells him, "Make sure you put some Lego in it," you're on to a good thing. For me, such sub-Vic and Bob absurdism rarely works - although there are moments when the forced incongruity hits home.
I'm usually a sucker, too, for the up-ending of theatrical convention. As their adventure takes them from Dalston to the Arctic tundra, the Boosh are forever commenting on their own script or sabotaging one another's props. They do so with charm, but insufficient discipline, as if they're too cool to be better than slapdash. There are promising comic routines - Howard struggling to open his tent, Vince's body being substituted for a dummy. In the hands of comedians like Peepolykus or the Right Size, these would be drilled to hilarity and beyond. Here, they're too casually dispatched.
It's still a fun evening, because the Boosh have charisma and imagination. Qualities, surely, that can produce something tighter, more surprising and less reliant on their fans' pre-existing adoration than this.
· At the Guildhall, Portsmouth (023-9282 4355) on Tuesday, then touring.