“Tell us a story, Ryan,” shouts an eager audience member half an hour into a lovely, low-key set from alt.country’s most volatile performer. For a second, Ryan Adams stops, en route from his guitar-playing spot to a seat at the piano. In the past, the North Carolina-born singer-songwriter has stormed off stage after such an interruption. Tonight, in a pitch-black theatre more used to hosting mainstream musicals, he carries on.

“How about a joke then?” requests another fan. Now Adams is angry. At least he pretends to be. “What am I, a comedian?” he snaps, brushing back his bowl-cut hair. Several minutes later though, the song has yet to start and Adams is rattling through a witty monologue that takes in bloggers who hate him, Sandra Bullock’s boyfriend and a fit of rage that left a butcher’s knife in his laptop.

Adams, now 32, has been hailed both a Dylan-like genius and a drunken has-been at regular intervals. His prolific output — he released three lengthy albums last year alone — has veered from sparse, piano ballads to bluesy rock’n’roll, but even his most ardent fans have found it patchy. In front of a reverential London crowd, however, he chose his set well. His solo debut Heartbreaker was ransacked of its most sorrowful songs, tracks from his recent country collection Jacksonville City Nights were sung with just a strum of acoustic guitar and occasional blast of harmonica and members of his sometime band the Cardinals shuffled on for fabulous renditions of Magnolia Mountain and Let It Ride.

After an interval came some of Adams’s best-known songs, including Sylvia Plath and New York, New York, a crowd favourite that became an anthem for fans post 9/11. Throughout, the vocals were spellbinding, but rarely original. Adams borrowed from Dylan one minute, Nick Drake the next, then Gram Parsons or Jeff Buckley. During a run of uptempo new numbers, there was even a bit of Bo Diddley. The real Adams, you suspect, is a smart, Tarantino type, borrowing from lots of cool sources, but making the music his own.

The most striking moment was when Adams thanked the crowd for coming. “I’m baffled that anyone would take a chance on me even showing up,” he said sweetly, and for once, he sounded like no one but himself.

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