BEWARE the term “traditional pantomime”. Far better, instead, that theatres should build their own pantomime tradition, modernising the show gradually each year.

Harrogate Theatre is doing just that without sacrificing the storytelling magic under the writing team of director Phil Lowe and the theatre’s chief executive, David Bown, who took over the mantle from Nicholas Pegg last year with aplomb for Aladdin. Their second collaboration is even better.

Harrogate sticks with certain conventions, such as having a fairy with rhyming couplet syndrome (Polly Lister’s chirpy Cockney Fairy Bow-Bells). The principal boy, meanwhile, is still a thigh-slapping bonny girl with a pop singer’s voice (Lara Denning, one of no fewer than seven performers with Harrogate panto experience in a principal cast of eight, and even the newcomer, Chloe Smith, was born in Harrogate!) Ruddy-cheeked Tim Stedman remains the children’s favourite, now in his 11th Harrogate show. Once more his squeaky-voiced brand of village idiocy as Idle Jack is a delight, whether falling asleep at the mention of the word “work”, or piling up a stack of terrible Christmas cracker jokes on each entry, or taking a series of daft phone calls in an under-sized red box. “What do you get if you cross a cow with a sheep and a goat?” he chirrups. “A milky bah kid”, of course.

Stedman’s stage persona, dim but bright, peaks in the 12 Days Of Shopping slapstick scene in the crammed shop of Alderman Fitzwarren (David Westbrook). This ensemble setpiece is steeped in silent-movie lunacy, as he ends up with his face covered in foam each time he sings Five Custard Pies, no matter where he stations himself on stage, or even in the pit. When one assailant emerges from the shop lift to surprise him, it affirms a wonderful freshening of a familiar routine.

Stedman nevertheless has a rival for the stellar turn this year. From the moment Tom Peters sings Let Me Entertain You as the first big number with such swaggering dance moves in his broad-shouldered pinstripes, his King Rat is a Thirties’ gangster supreme, part James Cagney, part cabaret turn, part English cad with a cane, and decidedly all rat behind his Laurence Olivier voice. He is suitably ratty tempered too, especially each time he has to explain his obscure Cockney rhyming slang – “Peter Purves” for “nervous”, for example – with rising exasperation.

Company regular Howard Chadwick dons the dame’s attire for the first time, and designer Helen Fownes-Davies has excelled with Sarah The Cook’s couture, especially the apron with the cherry-topped ice buns on the chest. Saucy!

Lister’s second role as a Jack-fancying Sultaness with an exotic Russian accent is eye-catching, David Lee’s choreography is full of panache; and the pop songs are superbly arranged by musical director Nick Lacey, from Glee hit Don’t Stop Believin’ to Rat’s Life and a Harrogate dissing of old York in Alicia Keys’s Empire State Of Mind.

Witty, pretty, funky and fun, Harrogate’s Dick Whittington is the Lord Mayor’s show of this season’s Yorkshire pantomimes.

Dick Whittington, Harrogate Theatre, until January 15. Box office: 01423 502116.