THERE'S a Kaler on the loose for a 23rd year and this time dame Berwick, dressed in bird feathers, enters on Harry Potter's preferred mode of transport.

Significantly, the broomstick snaps on landing: the message being that Berwick is not about to apply a fresh broom to a pantomime that is a tradition unto itself. What he does do, as writer, co-director and fulcrum for fun, is bring fresh ideas to age-old favourites, both in terms of routines and the parade of regular players.

He wasn't sure off the top of his dome whether this was his third or maybe fourth Beanstalk since beginning his long run in boots and red and yellow stockings at the Theatre Royal in 1976. What mattered, he said, was to treat it as if it were the first, and so new and old (no, not Berwick's age) come together in happy, familiar union.

Reunion too, with Suzy Cooper, as Jill, rejoining the trio with brio, Kaler's Fanny Shufflebottom, skipping sidekick Martin Barrass as his dipstick son Willy and the luvvie, lordly villain David Leonard as Dr Egostein, plus Joanne Heywood's ship-shapely principal boy, Jack.

Berwick had been "walking on air" at the return of SuperCooper, the principal girl who, like fellow blonde Kylie, looks better and better with each passing year. She was missing for Dick Whittington, detained in Casualty, but from the moment she makes her eye-fluttering, butter-wouldn't-melt entry in It Girl chic to Wheatus's Teenage Dirtbag, this is her finest hour in a Theatre Royal panto.

Berwick ribs her liberally about last year's absence, but rewards her golden return with her best lines: comic, combative, and sexy too. Her second-half dance routine in a slinky little black number with Leonard's hip-swivelling mad scientist Eogostein is the musical high point (rivalled only by Berwick dressing up as Ann Widdecombe with an out-of-control chest for It's Raining Men, on an otherwise forgettable night for songs).

It is said the plot doesn't amount to a hill of beans in a Kaler pantomime, but his twists on the age-old story bring more to this Jack. The giant, for example, is plastic surgeon Dr Egostein's latest gift to science in his Austrian castle laboratory, his creation preceded by his prototype, the accident-prone henchman Beanpole (played as a deadpan, dour Yorkshireman in a cleverly understated comic turn by Richard Ashton in ten-inch platforms). The impoverished old Mayor (Peter Huntley), meanwhile, has become a plastic surgery junkie with an Elvis fixation: better on paper than in reality.

What of the old stagers? Barrass is the master of the craft of acting daft, whether skipping or looking as crestfallen as Harpo Marx or Stan Laurel in frog, penguin and gnome costumes; Leonard prowls with hammy glee, albeit without a fifth gear this year, and adds a superlative Kaler impersonation; the ever-irrepressible, ad-liberty-taking Kaler gives himself an additional role as the Giant on an appropriately giant film screen in a stand-out innovation.

Add a new bouncy-castle element to the traditional Kaler-Barrass water slapstick, the return of a 3-D glasses routine, the glittering set designs of Nigel Hook, and the eye for visual impact of co-director Damian Cruden, and this is another Beanfeast, albeit without hitting the highest heights of the past.

Jack And The Beanstalk, York Theatre Royal, until February 2. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:58 Friday, December 14, 2001