Garrick, London
Under the celebration of sensuous delights, there is, as in all good comedy, a sadness, says Michael Billington

Palace Theatre, London

This is a good time for a show about Toulouse-Lautrec. The Victoria and Albert Museum has just opened its exhibition of art nouveau, that curvilinear movement in which the French artist figured prominently. This musical could have helped us reflect on how Toulouse-Lautrec learned to use bold simplification in his lithographs and paintings. That way Lautrec could have become a pendant to Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. But Charles Aznavour's new musical instead teems with skirt-waving bawdiness, allusions to split-crotch panties and vertically challenged sex.