Jeepers Creepers review – who was the real Marty Feldman? You'll be none the wiser

Even labours of love can be misguided, and it’s the case with this perfunctory look at the life and death of the British comic Marty Feldman, co-scripter of the classic radio series Round the Horne, which has Monty Python’s Terry Jones down for directing. There is very little sign that he did any.

Robert Ross’s slack script picks up the story of Feldman (played by David Boyle) as he’s filming Young Frankenstein with Mel Brooks and is on the brink of Hollywood success. He jokes that his pop-eyed look, said to be the result of a bungled thyroid operation, means he’s the only horror actor who has ever had to have makeup applied to make him seem less ugly.

But wife Lauretta (Rebecca Vaughn), keen to maintain the Hollywood lifestyle, which apparently means she will never have to change out of her dressing gown again, knows her husband is capable of scuppering it all. Their marriage – barely excavated in several meandering scenes – is under stress as success goes to his crotch, and he has affairs.

Feldman died of a heart attack aged 49 in 1982, while filming the pirate caper Yellowbeard, in which British comics including Peter Cook, Spike Milligan and several Pythons came a cropper and David Bowie makes a brief (and wisely uncredited) appearance as a shark.

Despite the best efforts of Boyle, the show never successfully conveys Feldman’s comic genius or why British and US audiences took him to their hearts in the late 1960s and 70s. If you didn’t know who Feldman was before arriving at the theatre, you are unlikely to be much wiser on leaving.

• Lyn GardnerAt At the Leicester Square theatre, London, until 20 February. Box office: 020-7734 2222.