It is always the slushy parts of a pantomime that let the side down. With an audience geared up for hissing and booing, the baddie gets an easy ride and, with the Dame and her sidekick being the real stars, the comedy is usually the highlight. This leaves the scenes of innocent young love and communal dancing rather exposed.
In this year's spectacular at the King's Theatre, the happy scenes are delivered briskly and with tremendous good nature, but with such blandness you can almost forget they're there. Now that having a female principal boy is less in fashion, the male lead tends to look insipid. Or, in the case of Philip Li's Aladdin, merely cute.
He is a cheery soul as he bounces eagerly on and off the stage, but he lacks spontaneity, giving a mechanical performance that is choreographed to within an inch of its life. Indeed, he seems most at home when he joins the chorus line, suggesting dance may be his real calling. Well matched with Kae Yukawa's pretty Princess, he gives no clue to the bad behaviour that has prompted Peking's finest short-trousered police force to pursue him so vigorously.
The choice of romantic songs is similarly flavourless - who actually likes this stuff? - although there are lively variants on tracks by the Black Eyed Peas and the Cheeky Girls. There is also a rewritten Yes, I Remember It Well, which, very amusingly, Allan Stewart as Widow McTwankey failed to remember on the opening night.
It is Stewart and Andy Gray as Elvis McSporran who command the show. You could happily watch them all night as they mug and wisecrack their way through a sharply topical script - surely this is the fastest panto off the mark with a David Blunkett paternity gag. Stewart is a gifted mimic, but it is Gray's turn as Ozzy Osbourne that brings the house down. Otherwise, he's a lovable blend of mannerisms picked up from Eric Morecambe and Elvis Presley, opposite Stewart's frisky falsetto dame.
· Until January 16. Box office: 0131-529 6000.
