Review: Jack and the Beanstalk panto at Sheffield's Lyceum Theatre

And thank goodness – heaven knows we all need somewhere to huddle with the heating on – because this year’s show, Jack and the Beanstalk, is a Christmas cracker.

The gags are funnier than ever, the slapstick script sparkles like the lights above Fargate, and as for Damian Williams’ outrageous panto dame costumes? They’re nothing short of spectacular.Williams is back at the Lyceum for his 15th brilliant year, this time as the hilarious Dame Trott, mother of Jack, whose hapless trade of their cow for beans leads to a giant tale of adventure. Not that the plot matters. The cow is named Delilah for no other reason than an excuse to sing the Tom Jones classic. The storyline, interwoven with a quest to save the environment, is as loose as the elastic on Dame Trott’s bloomers.

Wendi Peters – best known as Cilla Battersby in Corrie – returns for her third Sheffield panto stint, this time as the rhyming godmother Fairy Sugarsnap.Sheffield opera singer Maxwell Thorpe, who came fourth in the final of Britain’s Got Talent this summer, raises the roof (and elevates the tone, among the risque jokes and nonsense) with his beautiful baritone voice.

And actor Marc Pickering makes a fine fiend as dastardly, if misunderstood, villain Luke Backinanger.

There’s even a dog – star of CBeebies and every preschooler’s favourite pooch, Waffle the Wonderdog. (Our five-year-old couldn’t believe it. “Waffle is really real?!” she gasped, wide-eyed – in between booing loudly at the baddie from the edge of her seat and clapping along to every song.)

The beauty of pantomime is its universal age appeal, and there really is something for everyone young and old in this feel-good festive show. Our seven-year-old was spellbound by the opening scenes in which the set is missing, then miraculously descends to fill the stage with magic – a genius moment of pure theatre for little children.But even when the gags for the grown-ups – jokes about Liz Truss, Greta Thunberg, Boris Johnson and old Etonians – go over the kids’ heads there’s still plenty of hissing and shouts of ‘behind you’ to keep them constantly enchanted.

All the old Lyceum favourites are in there – the wheelbarrow of rapid-fire puns, the Bright Side of Life bench, the snarky jokes about Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster – plus segments that had our little ones screaming with laughter.

You’ll see few things funnier this Christmas than Dame Trott taking on a dog agility course, or being soaked to the skin in a see-through glass weather cubicle.My children declared the whole show “AMAZING!”, and announced they wanted to come back the next night to watch it all over. Well. We’ll have to do it again then, won’t we, wooh!