So now we have two West End musicals about outsiders in facial semi-disguise. One of these oddballs is, of course, a lovelorn ghoul who punts through the catacombs of a posh Paris building emitting forlorn Lloyd Webber melodies from below the vertical porcelain that covers a cheek. And last night he was joined by a man who wore horizontal, burglar-chic blinkers and stalked the pueblos of 1805 Los Angeles blasting our ears with music by what the publicity calls “the red-hot Gipsy Kings”.

Well, I don’t think Zorro the Musical is red-hot enough to match the 22-year-old Phantom of the Opera for longevity. In fact, I’m not sure it will survive 22 weeks, though it just about deserves to do so. Stephen Clark’s book and Christopher Renshaw’s production have the merit of not taking themselves too seriously. However, that’s a plus bought at a price, for narrative excitement is largely sacrificed. Imagine a mix of Errol Flynn and Monty Python, and you have the feel.

Anyway, Matt Rawle’s Diego leaves California to study in Spain, but somewhat inexplicably gets assimilated into a gipsy tribe, which then returns with him to a homeland that’s been hijacked and reduced to virtual slavery by his boyhood friend, Adam Levy’s Ramon. That’s why he becomes a man with a double life: a sort of fake-Romany Buttons in Ramon’s court; the swashbuckler with the sable mask, black cape and funereal boater when peasants must be saved from the gallows, or an imperilled beauty from the firing squad.

It’s nonsense, but quite agreeable nonsense. Levy is by some way the best actor on stage – though I and probably he could have done without the infant deprivation and childhood envy meant to motivate his crazed, narcissistic evil – but Rawle makes a pleasantly nonchalant hero with a nice sense of humour.

The evening is at its least effective when a supposedly solemn love is burgeoning between him and Emma Williams’s Luisa, a sweet señorita seemingly educated at Benenden. It’s at its most entertaining when he’s with Lesli Margherita as the dashing but humorous gipsy queen who institutes his disguise. Zorro: “I wish I could have the red mask and cape”; Inez: “Are you planning to entertain them to death?”

Gypsies, gipsies. They’re everywhere, sometimes dolefully ululating (“aah-ohh-ahh”) but usually swirling their skirts and generally flamencoing about. Indeed, the score largely consists of boots or chairs banging on floor, hand clapping hand or bashing pots in perfect unison. But I couldn’t quite agree with the bloke in the audience who cried “Olé!” in a public-school accent after most numbers. Zorro is fun, but not as much fun as all that.

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