THE title, you will note, is Snow White, and not Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs of Disneyland.

Hi ho, hi ho, and off to Hollywood the "Magnificent Seven Dwarfs" have gone, in writer-director Nicholas Lane's inspired reinvention.

The bearded seven have upped shovels, leaving Grim - Grim by name, grim by nature - in charge of their woodland house. Lane's Grim is not your average dwarf: too tall and not bearded, he's a writer not a whistler, and this is his story of Snow White and the evil queen Filania (Fiona Wass times two) and her jumpity Frog, Robert.

Being Grim's story, or rather Lane's story, Snow White has a Guardian-reading, intellectual dog companion called Tea Pot and the deadly huntsman of the original tale now goes by the name of Dudley Huntsman, Scottish children's entertainer.

If you had the good sense to see Lane's Beauty & The Beast and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, you will know the Lane house style. A cast of only two (always Lane plus one) is given a starter pack of an original fairytale, then makes its way from Chapter One to The End song with the aid of wildly inventive, cleverly choreographed yet seemingly on-the-hoof story telling, slapstick and satire.

With a magician's light touch, Lane pulls his theatrical rabbits out of a hat: a poetic, perky turn of phrase; a dressing-up trunk of props; plenty of bogey and bum jokes for the children and sly adult gags; and a moral about friendship. Such is his skill, he both celebrates fairy tales and deconstructs them.

Tristan Parkes's daft singalong songs and Rosie Chambers' woodland set of wood chippings, floorboards and furniture entwined in flora add to the pleasure of Lane and Wass's madly comic double act.

"Are you talking to me?" asks Robert De Niro Dwarf (don't ask, go and see for yourself) in the closing scene. Nicholas Lane's family plays are talking to everyone, child and adult, and the child in the adult. Like those seven dwarfs in LaLa Land, you should take the day off work and see this fairytale frolic.

Updated: 12:34 Friday, March 11, 2005