Le Gateau Chocolat: I Heart Chocolat

The spectacle of a massive, bearded Nigerian transvestite glistening in heavy make-up and a body-sock can’t fail to be a winner. Even before the former La Clique star begins to sing in a booming baritone fit to shake the part of the male anatomy he alludes to sucking on in chocolate-salty variety during his Chef-off-of-South Park-channelling opening number, and later very improbably pulls off a high-kick.

But is I Heart Chocolat entirely the by turns and touching and outrageous hoot it could be, particularly in light of Le Gateau Chocolat's triumphant 2011 Fringe debut? Probably not.

The core conceit whereby he roams the room to a disco beat with a box of chocolates, asking audience members to pick one as a prompt for the next song provides interactive mischief, but fails to yield quite the spontaneous hilarity promised. The penultimate routine where he condenses Les Miserables into a bitchily pithy five minutes is like a gay answer to One Man Star Wars, but kind of presupposes you’ve seen the film.

A more considered overarching theme—beyond the vague thread about “embracing your inner arsehole”—wouldn’t go amiss, nor would more straight-faced numbers such as his show-stopping Camille O’Sullivan-indebted reading of Nick Cave’s "The Ship Song." Party-starting takes on all from Amy Winehouse’s "Valerie" to Madonna’s "Vogue," replete with gaudy costume changes—the Dalmatian suit is particularly ingenius—ensure Gateau is a guaranteed good laugh whichever way you slice it. But a spectacle with greater depth than this is surely well within the big guy’s abundant means.