The Sleeping Beauty (Welwyn Garden City – panto)

Rather than the usual switch straight from the christening scene to Princess Aurora's 18th birthday, writer Nicholas Collett gives us a vignette of the period in between. So Laura Wickham's Aurora and her same-age admirer Welwyn Willie (Michael Totton) are encountered in the castle schoolroom.

She then ceases to be a rather frumpish gym-slipped, spectacle-wearing girl hovering in that awkward no-man-'s-land between childhood and maturity. He has become the court jester with his mother, Aurora's old nurse Dame Kitty La Quiche, (Collett) in full-blown cynicism mode.

Collett makes a good Dame, with sparks flying in her relationship with Ronnie Toms' King Bombasto. Helen Crosse's Carabosse – yet another of those steal-the-show villainesses with which this year's crop of pantomimes has been so well endowed – does run rings around her sister fée, Lily Tello's Twinkletoes.

Enter Prince Ivan (Hayden Wood), a royal not trying too hard in his search for a suitable wife. His encounters with Aurora, neither knowing who the other one is, work well and lead naturally to his rescue of her. The dancers, junior and senior, are talented and Crosse has given them some quite tricky steps to perform.

Guy Masterson is the director with Nikki Laurence as musical director. This is one of those shows which proe that you don't have to travel miles to a large theatre with a star-studded cast on offer for theatrical entertainment. Check out your local playhouse first – you may be pleasently surprised.

The Sleeping Beauty runs at the Hawthorne Theatre, Welwyn Garden City until 3 January.