Lean, besuited and bespectacled, the wry wordsmith is on the road again, with a show that reveals both his tongue and his eyes, beadily observing the world from behind those trademark glasses, to be as sharp as ever. John Hegley's latest concoction of comic poetry, stand-up, storytelling and song presents his audience with an alphabetical menagerie - an A to Z carnival of the animals, some of which turn out to be human.

There is a slide show of Hegley's likeably raw drawings, and there are singalongs. Music comes courtesy of his mandolin or guitar, and a double bass played by Keith Moore, dressed in music-hall clown-style in loud checks and bowler.

The back of Hegley's more sober jacket features numerous faux pockets, from which white folded hankies protrude rather like neat rows of Magritte clouds. It's in such confluences of the everyday and the surreal, in the skewing of the ordinary, that he finds, besides humour, humanity and tenderness. Not that anything here is sentimental.

Indeed, just as Hegley often constructs intricate edifices of complex rhyme, only to topple them in a poem's final line with some unexpected non-rhyming absurdity, so he sometimes crowns a tale with a casually delivered killer blow. A maverick lemming, refusing to follow its brethren over a cliff, enjoys a short-lived smug moment before being seized by a passing kestrel. The broad comedy of a guillemot's preening song of self-satisfaction, delivered with the sarky rock-star swagger of Elvis Costello crossed with Damon Albarn, is offset by the understated lyricism of Hegley's childhood memories of growing up in a Luton bungalow where his mother cleaned “around the clock”.

Spectators called upon to participate are rewarded: fig rolls, for those who like them, and figments, or imaginary biscuits, for those who don't. If Hegley's stage persona is deliberately a little unnerving, he also generates a wonderful warmth that enveloped utterly an audience ranging from pre-school to pensioner the night I caught the show at the BAC. And the sense of occasionally shambolic spontaneity only enhances its appeal. Quirky, inventive, and entirely beguiling.

Touring to May 23, www.johnhegley.co.uk

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