London welcomes Seinfeld - the ‘Sinatra of comedy’

Assuming he hasn't already skipped town, Jerry Seinfeld is waking up this morning, somewhere in London, to ecstatic reviews for his first one-man show in Britain for more than 20 years. Despite astronomical ticket prices for a comedy routine - the cheapest was £70 - his show at the O2 Centre has been greeted by critics as a huge success.

The New York comedian has grown up since his long-running "show about nothing" Seinfeld ended in 1998 and he retired from television a very rich man. He is now 57, married with children, and his material has moved on. But his mastery of observational comedy remains undiminished.

As Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian says, "He soon demonstrated his superb knack for hyper-inflating the implications of some absurd little detail, getting massive laughs and making it all look very, very easy."

Bradshaw and Tim Walker of the Independent agreed that some of his best material is now about being middle-aged, and not being on Facebook or Twitter. "Why say a lot of things to a few people," he asked, "when I can say nothing to everyone?"

Walker made the point that had he been one of the 22,000 or so punters who had to pay for their O2 ticket (rather than getting in for free as a critic) then he might have been miffed to learn that this was not actually Seinfeld's first gig in London for donkeys' years. He sneaked into London's Comedy Store earlier in the week and made an unannounced appearance at a show whose audience had paid only £20.

"If it's any consolation," writes Walker, "these are just the sort of miniature irritations of modern life that make up the bulk of his comedy material."

Steve Bennett, reviewing the show for the UK comedy site Chortle.com, called Seinfeld's material "some of the most exquisitely crafted observational stand-up you could hope to witness".

Bennett suggested not all the material was as sharp as it might be - he veered towards cliché with some of his takes on relationships and fatherhood - but forgave him because the man "has lost none of his common touch, unbeatable comic phrasing or forensic insight that made him the world's number one stand-up".

Dominic Maxwell in the Times also pointed out some weak spots - "once or twice he got polite laughter for American references that didn't travel" - but concluded: "This was a masterclass: lean, mean, propulsive, Seinfeld baring his fangs at the nonsenses of the modern world with material so tightly assembled that there was scarcely a spare sentence in there."

Or as Bradshaw of the Guardian put it, "Seinfeld is just a naturally brilliant performer, who only gets better. He is becoming the Sinatra of comedy." ·