TONIGHT'S THE Night is The Rod Stewart Musical, but it is not the Rod Stewart story.

Instead, Ben Elton has repeated the "jukebox musical formula" from his Queen liaison, We Will Rock You, that grafts a tenuous, even tacky storyline on to a hugely popular song book with his tongue very firmly in his cheek.

Whereas Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story stuck to the true life path and the Grand Opera House-bound 20th Century Boy strives to do likewise, retracing Marc Bolan's life cycle through the eyes of his son Rolan, Elton favours the Mamma Mia! model.

Both routes are paved with commercial gold, judging by the audience response on Monday night, but if you failed to stay with Rod after he sold his soul on Sailing and especially Do Ya Think I'm Sexy, then Tonight's The Night is not the show for you. You of the po-face and post-Faces desertion of Rod.

Likewise, if you bristle at a jolly usherette handing you a paper sailor's cap pre-show to don for the climactic Sailing singalong, then please move along, there's nothing to see here.

However, while there are much better musicals and much better written musicals than Tonight's The Night, tonight is the night when the songs – the cheesy ones as well as the early peaks – do their very best to cover the paucity of everything around them to bring a crowd to its feet at the finale to Caroline Jay Ranger's workmanlike production.

In a nutshell, it is not a show that will ever find favour with straight theatre reviewers, because it is clunky and obvious, the jokes are shoehorned into the script in typically blunt Ben Elton style and the characters are rock'n'roll stereotypes crossed with the soul-selling story of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Either you will like how the storyline is contrived from the Stewart songbook, or you will groan. It is best to be in forgiving mood.

The one selling his soul to Satan (Tiffany Graves) is Stuart (Ben Heathcote), a bespectacled wimpy car worker at a Detroit garage, too tongue-tied to declare his feelings for the equally bespectacled, tongue-tied Mary (Jenny Lee-James), until he strikes his fateful Faustian pact.

Suddenly, Stuart is sort of Stewart, or at least Rod Stewart-lite as he is taken down the rock'n'roll drive to booze, birds and bad behaviour by hard-living, veteran rock-chick promoter Baby Jane (Graves again), who changed her name from Maggie May. You get the picture, and then you have echoes of The Rocky Horror Picture Show too. Ultimately, Stuart will always be more Brad than Frank'n'Furter, and Heathcote's performance cannily walks that tightrope.

Heathcote may have the limelight, but the songs are dished out across the principals. Former Suagbabe Jade Ewen's Dee Dee has the show's stand-out number, a soulful rendition of The First Cut Is The Deepest, while the one character who steps out from the clichés is Ricky Rojas's cross between Johnny Depp and Keith Richards, groovy rock casualty Stoner. More like him would have been welcome.

Tonight's The Night, The Rod Stewart Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm, plus 2.30pm, today and tomorrow. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgticketscom/york