Exuberant Pet Shop Boys: goosing the good folk of Evita-land

Tricky blighter, The nonstandard pop show, as U2 doubtless can attest. Pop mart seems to have fared badly because people will only have the piss taken Out of them so much before they go and find some new mates. There seems something irredeemably rum about mocking people's predilection for consumerism and charging them 20-odd quid for the privilege. But the Pet Shop Boys are old hands at this: they were looking askance at rock's horrible trousers when Bono was still waving flags in Idaho. And, for all its minor longueurs and disappointingly murky sound, Somewhere: The Concert is stills splendid night out in the very heart of Evita-Land. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please raise your eyebrows for the Pet Shop Boys.

This is the first time that a pop group have taken up residency in a West End theater and it is only fitting that the Pet Shop Boys should test the water. There has always been something more Sondheim than Soundgarend about them, though one thing boldly reiterated here is that they are indisputably passionately a pop group. Tonight, there is nothing half hearted or shallow about 'Love Comes Quickly' 'It's A Sin' or 'Left To My Own Devices'. But there has always been a fault-line through the center of their music, too. It's embodied in the two personae, the hedonist and the academic, and in the tension created in their best songs between the sensual thrill of club culture soda very English melancholy Appropriately enough, then, this is very much a show of two halves.

Ignoring the rotten James Last-style arrangement of the middle movement of the Rodrigo Guitar Concerto, it begins with a startling coup de theater of designer Sam Taylor Wood's invention. On two large screens stage left and right in scratchy monochrome, Neil and Chris are seen chatting and drinking with some fairly vacuous-looking Trustafarians in what appears to be a Ladbrokes Grove loft. This goes on for some time until, over a crescendo of electro-beats, the boys turn, excuse themselves and walk through connecting doors out of the film and onto the Stage.

The audience love it. Witty and attention-grabbing, it's very Pet Shop Boys. It also seems to say something about the relationship between the Song, the singer and the audience. This isn't the only acceptable response, of course; ,It's just as correct to say "Wow, neat Entrance" and get On the tapping a toe to 'Yesterday When I Was Had'. A strange choice of opening number, it sets the tone for a refreshing, even challenging set. 'Yesterday When I Was Had' a in the form of a tabloid autobiography of the band. "You've both made such a little go a very long way" deadpans Tennant echoing well-meaning PSB critics.

The singer dons so acoustic guitar for Se A Vida E. Directly in front of him, a solitary girl shimmies and, at the song's close, Tennant, looking acutely self conscious, chucks her his plectrum. For long-term fans, it's a wonderful, hilarious and, yes, ironic moment. During Some Speculation and Hello Spacaboy a PVC trenchcoated dancer prowls the stage exposing more and more inches of unblemished thigh above black lacy holds-ups. She begins to tug suggestively at her blouse revealing that she is.....a man (one Lea Childs).

The first half concludes with the icy To Step A side from the apparently misdiagnosed Bilingual album. "Positive... Life-affirming... How could they have got it so wrong?" bemoans Lowe later. "It's tragic." Tennant agrees that To Step Aside maybe the bleakest thing they've done. "It's about wanting to walk away from relationships, from life, Pet Shop Boys - gothic gloom, really" Predictably the audience frug , like demos during Go West - albeit with proper consideration for the person in the next seat.

After the interval the set is a blaze of vermilion, the protagonists now dressed in indigo while the bright young things onscreen are now in living Color and, frankly pissed they provide a highly smackable visual. Counterpoint to a selection that begins with the Theater, a resonant - in these circumstances - tribute to the young homeless and later takes in Can You Forgive Her, Discoteca and a rather good new ballad. Friendly Fire, which Tennant claims came to him in a dream. New single Somewhere is saved from camp by sheer exuberance and the encores include, fittingly. West End Girls and the unjustly forgotten Left To My Own Devices.

In their swish dressing rooms afterwards. The boys are expansive, Lowe declaiming rather bewilderingly about William Hague and creosote while Tennant explains that the intimacy of the lot Savoy Theater can be a "little frightening it's a more low-key show. There are no wigs or dancers to hide behind "As for the accompanying vassals: "I don't think there's any deep philosophical message attached to them beyond the fact that entrance and exits are very important You're not supposed to read it as a critique of the people in the film like Janet Street-Porter did."

After the spectaculars of old, tonight's show feels just right, the songs presented with the minimum of palaver. In Tom Stopper's the Real inspector Hound, theater hack Birdboot offers his pre-show summary of a new play thus: "Me and the lads have had a meeting in the bar. It's good clean family entertainment but if it goes on beyond half-ten, it's self-indulgent. "Somewhere: The Concert fished, appropriately enough, at 10.17 exactly.