JAKE Thackray had long nurtured the idea of a stage musical in which his dales tales and disparate characters from his humorous songs would find a home.

Too late for the late, great Jake now, alas, but the baton has been passed to Ian McMillan, the ever buoyant bard of Barnsley. "I do like the idea that a playwright would like to use my old songs to make up a stage show of his own," Jake once said. "Lord knows how he'd string them together to make a fist of it."

McMillan makes a fist of it by taking Jake's advice to utilise a episodic, cabaret format with a small cast - six in this case - doubling characters. Jake reckoned a musical director/arranger and a young band would be important too. Step forward Neil Gore and actor-musicians swapping instrumental resources between them.

You could plot any number of routes through Jake's story, and McMillan steers Thackray's characters, lyrics and music on the road map to true love in an imaginary Swaledale community.

In essence there are three love stories: the innocent young love of cheeky Billy Kershaw (narrator Colin Kilbride) and blossoming butcher's daughter Isobel (Charley Desborough), forever chased by her cleaver-wielding mother (Jackie Drew); the Brigadier (Neil Gore) and his hot-handed pursuit of the leather-jacketed Widow of Bridlington (Elizabeth Eves) and cross-dressing Sister Josephine (William Wolfe Hogan); and the gentle, autumnal love of the Blacksmith (Wolfe Hogan) and Toffee-maker (Drew).

These stories overlap in the manner of Dylan Thomas's village portrait, Under Milk Wood, and the songs are "knocked around" (Jake's description again) with wonderful vigour to take on a new life, particularly in the haunting lullaby of old Molly Metcalfe (Drew again). Fine Time Fontayne's lively, lovely production is "great fun and larks", just as Jake said it would be.

Helmsley box office: 01439 771700; Selby, 01757 213 758.

Updated: 11:30 Friday, May 27, 2005