In a bold marriage of a Stars in their Eyes karaoke special and an avant-garde art experiment, Rufus Wainwright recreated a classic 1961 Judy Garland performance in its entirety on Sunday night. Backed by a 36-piece orchestra that helped to push ticket prices to Madonna-style heights, this sophisticated act of homage thankfully transcended Robbie Williams’s lumpen flirtation with Rat Pack-era swing. It was both a loving tribute and arch commentary on the original.

Arriving in a gold fake leopard-skin suit as understated as Garland herself, Wainwright initially appeared apologetic and anxious as he worked his way through 30-odd vintage songbook standards. He seemed less comfortable tackling upbeat belters such as Puttin’ on the Ritz or Chicago, but more emotionally attuned to melancholy ballads including Noël Coward’s If Love were All and George Gershwin’s How Long has this been Going On?. The latter, especially, was a thing of hushed beauty, and featured a breathtaking solo by a white-haired guitarist at least twice the singer’s age.

Wainwright’s barmy ambition in undertaking this project is commendable, even if his vocal timbre and range sometimes seemed ill-suited to the material. For all his high-camp stage persona, he is much more of a modern pop singer-songwriter than an old-school diva fluent in jazz, blues and opera. On some numbers these limitations worked in his favour, stretching his voice into a breathy and moving falsetto for the sublime, airy, featherlight ballad Do it Again. At other times he was drowned out by the sheer weight of orchestration.

Wainwright’s muted delivery was thrown into sharp relief when his sister Martha made a show-stopping appearance on Stormy Weather. She was dolled up like a 1940s forces sweetheart, and her piercing warble and eccentric delivery somehow conveyed more of Garland’s brittle, otherwordly charisma than her brother’s self-conscious mugging. Likewise Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft, who belted out two numbers with gutsy Broadway va-va-voom. This was true camp, not a knowing parody.

But these are minor quibbles. A whole night of Martha or Lorna might have grated, whereas Rufus sustained more than two hours of mink-lined melodies, costume changes and wink-wink gay innuendo with enough aplomb to excuse the odd strained note. Rufus Wainwright’s second Judy Garland show, Palladium, Feb 24

Return tickets are available from the London Palladium

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