La Cage Aux Folles, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday.

Box office: 01904 671818.

JULIE GOODYEAR, the newly re-crowned queen Bet of Coronation Street, tops the billing for La Cage Aux Folles, her smiling picture on the programme cover, gleaming teeth atop her white winter woollens.

However, she is playing very much a supporting role, and is happy doing so, her soap celebrity presence bringing attention to Jeremy Hobbs's touring production and in turn to its leading player, Ian Casey, and the glamorous Cagelles.

In a first half of nigh on 90 minutes, Julie makes her unmistakable entrance midway through to a flurry of applause.

She's playing chic, statuesque Jacqueline, whose 25th anniversary as the doyenne of restaurateurs on the St Tropez waterfront is marked by the presentation of a bouquet: a case of Goodyear for the roses. No sooner has she revealed her French accent than Julie is off again, inside a minute.

It feels like one of those heavyweight boxing bouts: all the build-up, then wham bam, knockout, but after this hors d'oeuvres, restaurateur Jacqueline would be back for her main course in the show's climax, singing The Best of Times in shimmering red, split to the thigh.

It would never happen in Corrie but Julie Goodyear is not the bird (the folle of the title) with the most exotic plumage in la Cage Aux Folles.

For this is the St Tropez club where tastefully effeminate Georges (a luvvie Jeremy Hobbs) presents the dangerous Cagelles.

"Half real, half fluff", theirs is a leggy world of feathers and frocks where you can't tell the females from the she-males as they announce We Are What We Are.

Mike Capri's choreography is quickly established as the best feature of Hobbs's very camp account of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's once cutting-edge, now dated gay musical. The acting tries to match its exuberance, displaying an enthusiasm usually seen only in children's TV presenters, here typified by Donovan Cary's excitable butler-cum-Tom and Jerry housemaid. Imagine Ainsley Harriot playing a panto dame, and you would be in the right bawl park.

Only the legs need to be long, but Hobbs's show runs at least 20 minutes beyond the point of self-indulgence.

Thankfully, at its over-emotional core is a triumphant turn from Ian Casey as prima donna Albin, the club's fading star turn.

He expertly judges the genuine drama and the queenly in his drama queen.

Updated: 12:08 Wednesday, February 13, 2002