Fans of We Will Rock You and Mamma Mia! might be forgiven for thinking that Thriller - Live is the latest in a long line of West End jukebox musicals. In fact, there's no fictional conceit stitching the songs together in Adrian Grant's “celebration” of Michael Jackson's music. Instead, a barrage of awards and sales statistics (flashed up in graphics on a screen) punctuate set pieces featuring a revolving cast of six singers.

Perhaps the most difficult job falls on the teenage shoulders of Kieran Alleyne. As four faux-Jacksons replicate the dance routines of I Want You Back and ABC, it is left to Alleyne to make a reasonable fist of the young Jackson's anguished, oddly world-weary tones.

Alleyne aside, any notion of matching songs to singers who bear a physical or vocal resemblance to Jackson is, at best, scattershot. Dressed in silver tassels, the Five Star vocalist Denise Pearson sings co-lead on I'll Be There, but it's no easier to work out what qualities sealed Roger Wright's involvement in this show. What Wright lacks in physical similarity to Jackson he also lacks vocally. The coarse, sandy qualities of his voice are as suited to Rock with You as custard is on a steak. Rather better are John Moabi, who combines sharp moves with an assured falsetto for Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), and Ricko Baird, who re-enacts Jackson's moonwalk routine in Billie Jean.

By moving almost entirely chronologically through the career of an artist who peaked 25 years ago, however, the show goes into freefall in the years beyond 1983. The absence of production values does little to paper over the deficit. And yet, Jackson's real story - part fable, part tragedy - is fascinating. Sadly, it isn't even hinted at.

Instead, there is a turf war scene, played out in Wanna Be Starting Something, that errs closer to Sesame Street than urban dystopia; and, for Man in the Mirror, a slide show of the increasingly modified Jackson visage that assumes unintended comic resonance when Ben Foster sings the lines, “I'm starting with the man in the mirror/ I'm asking him to change”. It is Foster, too, who draws the lyrical short straw on Earth Song, delivering the immortal line, “What about elephants/ Have we lost their trust?” with formidable sincerity.

Minutes later, as the opening strains of Thriller sound out, the logistical challenges of re-creating Jon Landis's costly video on a budget become clear. Scuttling, mid-song, to the back of the stage, Baird returns sporting a mask that may well have been purchased from the same joke shop as the Jackson Five's wigs. At this point, the elephants were the least of our problems.

Box office: 0844 412 4661, to April 12

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