The rest of the economy may be in a slump, but the boom times continue for the resuscitated stage sitcom. Already this year we’ve had a Dad’s Army tour and a Likely Lads revival, with the promise of a Porridge play to come. And now there’s ’Allo ’Allo!, with its naughty Nazis, saucy Frenchmen and bumbling Brits.

It was never subtle, in the ten years that it ran on BBC One, from 1982 to 1992, and it never tried to be. It was good, old-fashioned fun, filled with double entendres and farcical plots by the writers, Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft. Its comic broadness should, if anything, make even more sense on stage than it did on television.

So why is ’Allo ’Allo! so, well, so-so? It is, after all, played pretty well – Jeffrey Holland may not have the awkward charisma of the original star, Gordon Kaye, but he is comically adroit as René Artois, the café owner helping the French Resistance while serving drinks for the occupying Germans and having affairs with his waitresses, Mimi la Bonque and Yvette Carte-Blanche. The latter is played by one of the original cast members, Vicki Michelle. She plays it fine, but her presence also reminds us that the rest of the actors are substitutes.

James Rossman and Nell Jerram are amusing as the Gestapo man Herr Flick and his ice-queen accomplice, Helga. Yet the moment when Helga strips down to her swastika-decorated red basque must have had so much more zing when it was first performed by the original stars.

The plot, a spin-off written by Lloyd and Croft in 1986, revolves around the painting of “the Fallen Madonna with ze big boobies”. Everyone wants it, including Hitler, who pops into town to pick it up. There are some jolly subplots leading up to this, but, really, it’s a vehicle for the gusto of the players rather than a fully functioning farce.

Richard Tate, playing the absurd M Leclerc, knows how stupidly big to pitch it. Elsewhere, the double entendres are pretty dire and your heart sinks every time the Brit disguised as a gendarme offers his witless mispronunciations: “Listen very carefully, I will sow this only wince.”

James Robert Carson’s production lacks the fizz needed to sell cheery rubbish like this. Maybe the cast will flourish as the tour continues, but, for the moment, ’Allo! ’Allo! doesn’t so much prove these characters still work as remind us of how they used to work.

Box office: 0870 0131030. To Saturday, then touring

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