THIS is not Puss In Boots, the English pantomime. Puss In Boots is French, and the French love farce but eschew panto. Yet whatever form comedy takes, surely all that matters is that it makes you laugh.

So, into those French boots and into that conundrum step York Theatre Royal, York company TongueTied Theatre and Slaithwaite storytellers Telling Tales for a Puss In Boots, set in France, performed in English and definitely not a pantomime.

Instead this storytelling performance is built around a foley (live sound) artist cum musician, puppetry, shadow-play theatre and olden French theatre techniques, and it works wonderfully well, earning its Breton stripes.

The story was written more than 300 years ago by one Carles Perrault – who also created versions of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty incidentally – and his adventure story format is now mirrored by writer Robin Simpson in a 70-minute show for five year olds and upwards and even downwards at All Ages family shows.

Simpson takes his place in a fleet-footed cast of four, each in a variation of a combination of a beret with a bobble, striped top, high-waisted trousers, braces, flamboyant socks and blue or red shoes.

He plays Jack, a down-at-heel boy befriended by the talking cat of the title, who is seen in two puppet forms, first as slinky as a concertina, then almost as tall as puppeteer Lizzie Wiggs, attached to her feet in shiny green boots.

Chief storyteller Susanna Meese steers the play's passage, as well as playing the gushing Princess Lovely and "everything else left over", while York's own Richard Kay is in charge of all manner of sounds on all manner of instruments, from wine bottles to spoons, squeezebox to a violin bow played on a cymbal.

He also is the voice and rumbling stomach of the Ogre, who has made France so unhappy, and he finds time to play the King, not the most sophisticated of men but ever keen to try a new hobby every few days (rather in the manner of Toad of Toad Hall).

Only by bringing the boorish Ogre down to size can Puss In Boots help his master to a prosperous life and return France to a state of joy. In this cause, all is played with zip and panache and an English take on Gallic style without ever sending up the French with Franglais accents or onions etc.

Instead, the humour and drama rest in the characterisation and the situations and predicaments those characters face, such as the clash between the clever cat and the thick ogre, a climax that has a hint of danger too.

Director Kyle Davies oversees an enchanting, imaginative, highly amusing French frolic of a feline story, performed with such obvious joy by a cast blessed with a witty, wily, sprightly script and fantastic, playful costume and set designs by Lydia Denno.

"Paper theatre" cards are flung gleefully around the stage and shadow puppetry revitalises an old overhead projector. French resistance is futile; Puss In Boots is the cat's whiskers.

Puss In Boots, York Theatre Royal, TongueTied Theatre and Telling Tales, at De Grey Rooms Ballroom, York, until January 3 2015. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.