KEY POINTS:
When it wasn't doing multimedia things, Bill Bailey's video backdrop was festooned with a screensaver of lightbulbs which may be symbolic - there's a lot of ideas in this show by the English comic, who is now a lot more famous than when he first hit these shores 12 years and a few inches of forehead ago.
Bailey's elevation to being a sort of heir-apparent to Billy Connolly - for swearing, substitute vast musical talent - was reflected in the production.
The stage came with a rock-strength sound and lighting rig, a guitar or three, a keyboard stack and that screen with which Bailey interacted with various degrees of success - arguing with the various elements of his psyche, good; having a hip-hop singalong about the British grocery chain he refused to do an ad for, frightful. No, Bailey was best when it was just him and his big 80-watt imagination.
Which is why much of his first half fell a little flat - not helped by telling us the traditional NZ Customs Service anecdote from that first visit all those years ago and some other stuff that felt tired in the retelling. That's whether he was doing very Daily Show things with video images of George W. and Osama bin Laden, contemplating the works of Lionel Richie or mocking the lyrics of a song by the Killers that probably came out the last time he played here.
But when he got to grips with the unpredictable - like the ramifications of pan-national power company ownership in the European Union; the risks of the particle accelerator experiment beneath Switzerland and how the music of Star Wars might have been improved if it had been done in a jazz scat style - Bailey showed the oddball genius that places him into a higher, more tangential orbit to most stand-up acts.
And his closing musical bracket sealed the deal, which took in an emo number fairly indistinguishable from Saturday night Vector Arena visitors Panic at the Disco through to a hefty folk workout on his bouzouki-saz on a number that may have mentioned a Toyota Prius but sure didn't lack for acceleration.
After a rambling routine beginning, in the end it was a win for Bailey's big ideas.
