WHAT’S this? A musical opening to Cinderella with all the cast gathering on the stage as the principals introduce themselves in song. That’s novel.

Too novel for “the Voice of God”, alias Rory Queen, surely the best name ever for an actor, who is absent from dame duty this year after opening Rory’s Bar in the Market Place. In a show-stopping voiceover, he calls for a traditional start, by order of Malton’s Queen.

The rest of the show follows a more familiar format, albeit with one significant addition to the script provided by Mark Llewellin, John Jardine and Roy Barraclough (yes, that Roy Barraclough, from Les Dawson’s shows and Coronation Street).

John Hall, the York director in charge of his second successive Malton & Norton pantomime, was so impressed by Year Seven schoolboy Ben Greenhough’s audition that he created the role of Zip for the Kirkham Henry Performing Arts student.

Greenough’s irrepressible, fast-talking, spiky-haired Zip forms a double act with Josh Milner’s Buttons in what could be 18-year-old Josh’s last Malton & Norton show if he takes up the offer of a scholarship at the New York Film Academy.

What an experience that would surely be, but in the meantime, he brings energy, fun and not a little pathos to the role of Buttons, whipping up the audience with a variation on Gangnam Style every time he and Zip enter the stage.

The show is peppered with double acts of different kinds, led off by Saskia Kirkham-Burke, 15, in her Malton & Norton debut, swapping roles with Bethany Fox, 17, as Prince Charming and Dandini. Proper, old-fashioned, leggy principal boys the pair of them, they sing delightfully, move well and have plenty of panto spirit.

Partnership number three is the Ugly Sisters, Neil Paylor’s Kylie and Mark Boler’s Britney, a right rough and ready duo, who throw themselves around the stage with gusto in the cause of capering comedy, especially in the cookery slapstick scene.

Seen but unseen are the fourth partners, Mary Rohan and Ann Jacques, the front and back end of Don Quixote, the far from docile donkey, not a character normally to be found in Cinderella but a big hit all the same.

A short-and-tall combination completes the doubles: society newcomer Peter Melia’s put-upon Squire Snatchall is reduced to knee height with eye-tricking fake short legs, dwarfed by Margaret Lukey’s statuesque, Cruella de Vil-style Baroness Stoneybroke, who is splendidly attired by the wardrobe team.

Ryedale School GCSE student Ria Williams, in her second Malton & Norton principal role, has all the right ingredients for Cinderella, whose sadness is countered by an inner radiance and determination. She sings strongly throughout too.

Chloe Rendall more often focuses on putting others in the spotlight as a stage lighting designer but treads the boards for the first time in a while with obvious enjoyment as the Fairy Godmother – a sense of enjoyment shared by the show’s senior and junior chorus lines and senior and junior dancers.

Praise too for the sterling contributions of choreographers Rebecca Neascu, Joanne Dawson and Michaela Kemp, musical director Gill Boler, organist Andrew Nix and drummer John Piercy, the backbeat of the excellent band.

Watch out too for assorted familiar local faces in the film sequence, a comic highpoint that draws instant cheers from an audience thoroughly entertained by Malton & Norton’s boisterous pantomime exploits, firework big bangs and all.

Cinderella, Malton & Norton Musical Theatre, Milton Rooms, Malton, until Saturday; 7.15pm plus 2.15pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01653 600048.