If there is anything more gay than a 33-year old man singing Judy Garland's Foggy Day dressed in lederhosen, it is that same man grappling with Garland's Get Happy! in full drag, surrounded by seven male non-dancers attempting a cheerily shambolic approximation of the song's original choreography in the Summer Stock musical. Rufus Wainwright offered both and during Get Happy! his microjacket revealed a pair of frankly fantastic legs.

For all his camp (another costume change had him in a dressing gown), Wainwright is much more than, as his closing song had it, the Gay Messiah or an upmarket Julian Clary.

For two hours across two magical sets he displayed the remarkable gift of switching moods from laugh-out-loud silly (a discourse on a Magellan belt clip; pondering Killers singer Brandon Flowers's response to his tribute Tulsa, "Not a note, not a word"), to the hushed intimacy of the hopelessly romantic Tiergarten and the crushed dreams of Slideshow.

The knowingly charismatic Wainwright and his multi-tasking, supertight band (the very same septet who danced so marvellously badly to Get Happy!), cruised through all his second album Release The Stars, Noel Coward's stately If Love Were All and catalogue picks such as the stomach-tighteningly operatic Beautiful Child, a mesmeric 14th Street, during which the band gradually sauntered off stage leaving only Jack Petruzzelli strumming a banjo, and that most stern of Irish traditional airs, Macushla.

Most exhilarating of all was the somewhat more earthy Between My Legs, which not only involved a Phantom Of The Opera-esque climax, but a sterling cameo from uber-luvvy actress Frances De La Tour taking Sian Phillips's recorded part.

Even the former Miss Jones, though, could not hijack Wainwright's spotlight. He was sensational and he's at the Old Vic until Thursday. Sell a relative to get a ticket.

• Until 31 May. Information: 0870 0606628.