There are things that have been restored to Act II that she has always loved, but whether they will still be there tonight, she cannot say. As a parting shot, she shares with me one of her father’s favourite opening-night gambits: “How do you think it went?” Trevor Nunn should be ready for that.’South Pacific’ opens tonight and runs until 27 April, Olivier, National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 (020-7452 3000). The roar of delight that went up when the safety curtain rose for the start of the second half was proof pretty positive that the children were having a ball at the Lyric’s Aladdin And not just the children either. The show is a co-production with the marvellous Told By An Idiot company and it’s a very funny and beguiling mix of traditional panto and modern physical theatre.Hayley Carmichael’s endearingly titchy Aladdin may look like a parody of a white rapper (with her spangly reversed baseball cap and gilded trainers) once she’s been enriched by the genie, but there are some routines in this piece that were going strong when Eminem’s great-granddad was still a gleam in his father’s eye.
The time-honoured “business” is given a mischievous twist, though, by performers who have a terrific natural rapport with the young audience. Who could fail to warm to a villain as incompetent, accident-prone and stupidly vain as Richard Katz’s lean, shifty klutz of an Abanazar? “If you were really my husband’s brother,” declares Widow Twanky, “you’d have his birthmark…” (Abanazar takes the laundry’s hot iron and agonisedly brands his right thigh) “…on his left arm.”This is a baddie who can’t even properly pronounce the hero’s name and is at a complete loss when the stolen lamp won’t do his bidding (“I haven’t got the handbook,” he wails, “It was second-hand.”)After abducting the Princess (“You floss your teeth, while I slip into something a little less comfortable”), he tries to foil his foes by miniaturising the lamp and swallowing it But he winds up with the genie stuck permanently inside him. As that being is a burly hairy Scot, Abanazar is now a walking civil war – arguing with his invisible but voluble tenant about whether they should have curry or mashed tatties for supper.

It’s as though Robbie Coltrane had taken up turbulent residence inside Omar Sharif.True love triumphs in the show over narrow considerations of dynasty, with birds twittering and a host of luminous hearts throbbing whenever Carmichael’s Aladdin encounters Natasha Gordon’s modern, disaffected adolescent of a Princess.The production avoids soppiness by this send-up of kitschy romance but, thanks to Carmichael, who has a Judi Dench crack in her voice and poignant spirit to spare, the relationship is a genuinely moving one. The piece manages to be knowing about its theatricality (Javier Marzan’s wonderfully engaging Wishee Washee may be thick, but he’s smart enough to realise he’s somehow in a show) without for a moment resorting to tired-old-pro’s cynicism. True, there are a few adults-only jokes (an outrageous sequence, for example, where Paul Hunter’s excellent Widow Twanky is seen having a high old time perched on a washing machine during its fast spin), but nothing that destroys the entertainment’s essential innocence and good humour.I’m not going to reveal how the company stages a magical magic carpet ride, nor whether Abanazar’s camel – a creature called Gorgeous (Erika Poole) who looks like a blonde lady in khaki shorts with a knapsack hump – ever gets her wish of becoming human. To find out, you’ll just have to visit the best Christmas show I’ve seen this year.To 12 January 2002(020-8741 2311). Theatrical packages don’t come much smaller than this show (most of us have bigger rugs), but The Rose and the Ring is a very good thing indeed.

Tightly stuffed with talent, Lucky Skilbeck’s deft production is energetic and funny and Peter Morris’s book and lyrics, along with cleverly trimming and updating the Thackeray classic, strengthen its symbolism and improve its morality. Considering the haplessness of most English musicals, this may sound an unlikely report, but I assure you it’s no fairy tale.The story begins with a pronouncement that, if expressed to a social worker, would probably get you done for child abuse these days. Having given two princesses a rose and a ring that make all who see them love them, their fairy godmother has watched them grow up vain and foolish.
Determined not to repeat her mistake with Prince Giglio and Princess Rosalba, she decides “the best thing I can give is a little misfortune”.”Little” indeed! The poor prince spends 15 years pining for his childhood sweetheart, Angelica, who disdains him, while Rosalba toils, unrecognised, as a palace servant, worshipping the unseeing Giglio. When the magic ring passes from Angelica to Rosalba, it touches off a series of coups de foudre in Giglio, Angelica’s father, and her fianc?rince Bulbo (who has inherited the rose). Taking their cue from Bulbo’s habit of clasping the rose in his teeth, Morris and the composer Michael Jeffrey have transformed him into a seedy Latin lover, leading a conga line of swooning fans.Though Thackeray abandons his title tokens halfway through his tale, in this version Rosalba removes the ring before marrying Giglio to make sure he really loves her.

The sweet but simple prince is also made to go to university and study hard so that he can be a wise king. (He must, however, make himself deaf to his college’s fight song: “No one studies, no one bothers!/ For we all have wealthy fathers!”)There is enough anachronism and irony to amuse large children but not so much as to sour the tale for little ones. Grown-up critics are catered for by the king’s “spectacle”: impatient with plot and characterisation, which get in the way of the gory action he enjoys, he asks: “Why must the actors use fake spears?”The cast, with fine articulation and plenty of vim, is splendid, but some members are particularly appealing: Ben Caplan’s goofy Prince Bulbo perpetually glows with wonderment at his magnificence; Louisa McCarthy, as the spoilt, sulky Angelica, flounces up a storm. Ben Heathcote is a winsomely downtrodden Baldrick-type flunky, and Oliver Senton and Jeremy Worsnip are enthusiastic and debonair paragons of wickedness, respectively, as the chamberlain and king – the latter reminding one of a slimmer and better groomed Marquess of Bath.To 5 January 2002 (020-7704 2001). A sign out front warns patrons about strong language and strobe lights, but it might be more helpful to give the more sensitive of disposition a hint about Roger Allam. On the other hand, I think nothing would have prepared me for this beefy actor, known for playing slightly stuffy English gents, in high heels, frilly knickers, and a small mountain of slap as the star of The Blue Angel. The importance of the role requires some gravitas, not uninflected campery, and the casting against type points up the duality and ambiguity of this constantly unsettling play.