One critic wrote that seeing Jerry Springer: The Opera at the National, two years after its debut, was like arriving sober at a party where everyone else was drunk.

Watching it on telly last spring felt like arriving at a five-year-old's birthday party where everyone was E-numbered up on green jelly and the entertainment consisted of shouting "wee" and "poo" at the grown-ups.

Writers Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee were heroes of the Nineties alternative comedy scene - had it really taken a man in a nappy serenading the joys of coprophilia to propel them from Edinburgh Fringe to the West End?

Incredible how viewing art in its proper context can make such a difference. The genesis of this show - and its genius - was the observation of a pleasing correspondence between opera and the cynically manipulated slagging matches of daytime talk shows. Live, the dramatic potential of this clever conceit is driven home.

Impressive operatic muscle is brought to bear on Lee's kaleidoscope of expletives and genital configurations, a cast resembling the outer reaches of a Guess Who board are presented as the tragic heroes and heroines, and a tap-dancing Ku Klux Clan chorus have nothing to do with anything but are nevertheless a hoot.

The show's gleeful creativity, however, now vies with a rather stale sense of smug self-satisfaction.

And while there are some brilliant lines (the pole dancer finally rebukes her censorious mother with the words "everything you touch turns to cancer"), the majority of punchlines become tiresomely predictable (guess what rhymes with three nipple cousin f***** - okay, not such a good example).

I'm glad this tour, which has been impaired by the underhand tactics of Christian Voice and the cowardliness of promoters Avalon, has finally found a full house as it comes to rest in Brighton.

But it's a shame the same audience was in such short supply when Lynne Plowman's brilliant new opera House Of The Gods, which also contrasts epic themes with prosaic context and highbrow form with bawdy humour, had its premiere at the Brighton Festival in May.

As for the Christian protesters, apparently the worst they've been objecting to is the depiction, within the hellish hallucination which over-prolongs Part II, of a Jesus who describes himself as "a bit gay". Who's going to break it to them that God looks like Michael Winner?

There will be a pre-show debate on Saturday at 5.30pm in the Founder's Room at the Dome Concert Hall.

Until Sat, 01273 709709