HI-DE-HI star Su Pollard is celebrating her 60th birthday in York this week and there is no hi-de-hiding from her typically excitable performance as the heavy-drinking Miss Hannigan.

You may recall Miss Pollard playing this bibulous role five years ago to the very month at the Grand Opera House, and, if anything, she has turned up the comedy button another notch in the corniest of Broadway musicals.

In twisted stockings and seen-better-days cardigan, her Miss Hannigan cradles a bottle and runs the New York City Municipal Orphanage with wild abandon and a shrill whistle. Rather than the hard-hearted, intemperate harridan of yore, she is more of an erratic figure, drunk and disorderly but comical too, and Miss Pollard is closer in style to a silent-movie comedy star, all exaggerated slapstick gestures, looking for a laugh at every turn.

If she is the loose cannon of Roger Hannan’s sentimental, sweet-toothed production, David McAllister is the ballast as Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, the billionaire industrialist in the Depression-struck Big Apple with a soft heart for precocious orphan Annie (a role shared on tour between Grace Clevey, Chloe Greig and Lydia Tunstall).

James Gavin’s slippery con artist Rooster and Sophie McEwan’s gum-chewing floozie Lily St Regis add a little danger to the humour, while Simone Craddock’s Grace Farrell radiates kindness. Alan Miller’s set and Pete Watts’ lighting evoke the Thirties’ era of extreme poverty and wealth but Hannah’s choreography needs more sparkle and imagination in a show short on charm.

Annie, Grand Opera House, York, until tomorrow. Box office: 0844 847 2322.