It's difficult not to laugh at a 41-year-old man wearing blusher, a dress and a pair of fake boobs.

But comic genius, toast of Broadway and action transvestite Eddie Izzard did not quite hit the ground running as he jetted in from the US.

Last week, Izzard was wowing audiences in Philadelphia as he rounded off the Stateside leg of his six-month Sexie world tour.

Since he departed these shores, Izzard has won over New York's vicious critics in A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg and put in his best big-screen performance as Charlie Chaplin in Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow.

So perhaps it was no surprise that on Monday night, he seemed to be finding his feet again when it comes to playing to a British audience.

From the many blank expressions, Izzard left much of his audience behind with a number of his non-sequiteurs. "Eastbourne didn't get that," he noted on several occasions.

Too often, instead of being sexie, he was frumpy. Of course, when you are chez Eddie, you expect to get lost from time to time and when he was good, he was great. In one segue, he explained the parallels between transvestites and super heroes.

"Both have to change clothes in order to help people. Only thing is, transvestites don't help people. Other than that, we're quite similar."

The transvestisism is a clever schtick as it throws the audience off the scent and allows Izzard the latitude to venture into some bizarre comic territory, such as a truncated version of Homer's The Odyssey in which he speculates on how The Gorgon's hairdresser went about his job.

Another revelation was about how throwing a cat out of a car window might have led Doppler to his conclusions on sound waves and to the invention of the fire engine siren.

Izzard acted out his wonderful tangents as mini plays with himself in all the roles.

On the whole, he appeared to be improvising around a rudimentary plan - hence the hit-and-miss nature of his material.

The effect was like watching the world's greatest juggler attempting to keep three balls, a watermelon and an elephant in the air - sometimes it worked, sometimes it fell flat on its face.

But Izzard is still one of the most idiosyncratic and original comics you will see on stage and, as he gains momentum, he will only get sexier.

Review by Denise Graham, features@theargus.co.uk