From the moment Loopy Louis whips a mop head out of his bum ("I said I wanted to come in on a moped", chortle, chortle) all pre-theatre fears of Beauty And The Beast - the summer pantomime at the Gaiety - being "a girlie thing, like the film" are put to rest, and it's pretty much a laugh a minute all the way through.

Lionel Blair plays Danton, the village babe magnet who believes everything he sees in The Irish Times. . . indeed the bounds of plausibility are somewhat stretched for the whole show. We get the village children - an 18th-century French village, that is - doing a spot of Riverdance, Viagrariddled sausages putting up a tremendous performance and ol' gorgeous pants himself leading the entire audience in a quick session of crotch-thrusting line-dancing ("lasso, lasso, point your gun" . . . honestly).

Loopy Louis (Paul Hendy) - one of the beast's unfortunate servants yearning for a call from his beloved Sally Sausage - and Oui Frank (Paddy Jenkins), Danton's long suffering yes-man, dish out masses of audience-participation moments, brilliantly and hilariously. In fact there's so much fun and games going on that the actual tale of Beauty, played in an array of gorgeous costumes by Eastenders star Sophie Lawrence, and the Beast (Arvid Larsen) takes on sub-plot status most of the time. It's all heart-wrenching ditties and poignant moments, and great puffs of smoke as Beastie transforms into Mr Nautilus (with a "hubba, hubba " from some of the youngest members of the audience, again, honestly. . . ). And in the end, of course, everyone gets married and lives happily after - yeeeeha! Don't miss it.

Beauty And The Beast runs until Saturday August 29th.