One could say that Damon Albarn has a thing about primates. The Blur front man created the virtual group Gorillaz and last year he teamed up with animation buddy Jamie Hewlett to premiere Monkey, a spectacular east-west fusion of opera, circus and martial arts. After an acclaimed run at the Royal Opera House, this intriguing, frustrating, Mandarin-language blend of classic Chinese text and Japanese manga comic takes up residence in a specially constructed big top beside the O2.

Unfortunately, there’s more confusion than Confucianism in the libretto by director Chen Shi-Zheng, which results in little emotional engagement with the work.

Those reading the overpriced programme will struggle to reconcile the synopsis with the stage action. The main thrust of the quest narrative, in which our not particularly furry hero accompanies the monk Tripitaka to India to retrieve some sacred Buddhist scrolls, only gets going in the fifth of nine scenes. Prior to this, Monkey unleashes his arrogance on an unsuspecting world: one minute he’s under the sea playing with what look like nuclear weapons, the next he’s at a Heavenly Peach Banquet, which is a kitsch riot of stripy leotards. Paradise turns out to be a place where lissom young ladies spin plates. Who knew?

All credit must go to Albarn for composing in a musical idiom so unlike his own; it’s just a shame that the score can’t occasionally change key from its innocuous ethereal waftiness into something more striking and memorable. Awkwardly positioned screens for surtitles don’t help either: the parents in front of me were stuck with reading the peculiar translations to their children. I didn’t envy them the likes of “carnal itch” and “erroneous womb”. Yet it’s as a spectacle pure and simple that the show almost enchants the 2,400 spectators in this too-large arena.

Delicious between-scenes animations from Hewlett give way to tableaux featuring 27 super-bendy performers from the Dalian Acrobatic Troupe, two martial arts specialists as well as nine main actors. There’s a couple of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-worthy fight scenes, in which Cao Jiangtao’s appealingly cocksure, scampering Monkey participates with aplomb. More of this would have made Monkey’s journey to east London truly memorable.

Until 5 December (0844 856 0202). www.monkeyjourneytothewest.com