With a history of working with companies such as Improbable, the Lyric has made a tradition of producing Christmas shows that are slightly off the wall. There's no change to the recipe this year, with the ever-inventive Told By an Idiot creating a delicious Arabian concoction that owes a considerable debt to panto but also offers the wild and plaintive charm that characterises so much of the company's work.
Told By an Idiot are panto naturals: Hayley Carmichael was born to play a bashful principal boy, and Paul Hunter is a fantastically outrageous Widow Twankey, swigging gin and looking for love in her Whirl and Twirl laundry. And they surround themselves with a cast of equal inventiveness.
One of the great joys of this devised show is how often it goes for the droll rather than over-the-top comedy. This may make it slightly too grown-up - in terms of theatrical style as well as humour - for the very young, but it more than compensates with some deft touches, including a terrific flying carpet and a genie who is a cross between Billy Connolly and Jean Brodie.
There are lots of jokes deconstructing theatre that will appeal to adults who would really prefer to be at something more serious. And if you want to peer more deeply into this polished lamp, you will find a consistently pursued theme of dreams of escape, culminating in Aladdin and his princess running away from their own wedding.
The whole thing is quite low key, and its great strength is that it is devoid of the extreme camp that afflicts most pantos. Widow Twankey may be a vision of gold-lamé loveliness, and when Aladdin and the Princess gaze at each other across a crowded market, the birds do indeed go "Tweet tweet", and pink hearts appear, but the actors play the emotion for real. You even feel genuine sympathy for lovable villain Abanazer's mistreated camel, Gorgeous, who longs to be a femme fatale.
This is not an evening for those looking for a brash riot of a Christmas show. This is the theatre-lover's panto, an evening that will make both you and the kids smile, and perhaps even shed a tear.
· Until January 12. Box office: 020-8741 2311.
