Since its stage revival, Jeff Wayne’s classic 1970s concept album, based on HG Wells’s masterpiece, has seen a new life, filling arenas with huge holographic narrators and pyrotechnic bombast.

This final tour offers a fond farewell to a distinctive album-turned live musical.

With Liam Neeson projected on-screen, taking Richard Burton’s original role as narrator, Wayne himself composes an impressive ensemble, comprising of musicians from the original recording, including bassist Herbie Flowers, the ULLAdubULLA Strings group, and an acting cast featuring Jason Donovan, Westlife’s Brian McFadden and Les Miserables’s Carrie Hope Fletcher.

With a massive, fire-belching tripod overhead and CGI visuals somewhere between Battlestar Galactica grace and Babylon 5 clunkiness, the feeling of all-out spectacle is mostly complete.

Of course, McFadden and Donovan are no Justin Hayward and Phil Lynott (their equivalents in the original).

McFadden particularly sounded flat on Sunday, while X-Factor star Shayne Ward as The Artilleryman comes across as sadly am-dram.

Still, with Donovan’s Parson Nathaniel a decent stab at wretchedness and Hope-Fletcher vocally strong as his wife Beth, this barely matters.

For all the overwrought posturing, impressive effects and big-budget production, though, the star remains Wayne’s brilliantly catchy songs.

With a note-perfect musical performance, certain transgressions are more than forgiven.