Fairytales aren't written, they are cooked. Each teller takes pretty much the same ingredients, stirs them together and puts them in the oven. But the cake that emerges tastes different every time, because with fairytales the flavour and consistency is dependent on both who is doing the cooking and who is doing the eating. The Aladdin story is best known in this country through the Disney movie and numerous pantomime outings. In this new version, adapted by Simon Reade and Aletta Collins from Philip Pullman's 1994 retelling of the story, you will find no Widow Twanky worrying about her smalls in the Wishy Washy laundry.
There are moments when some panto exuberance creeps into the proceedings, but this is an attempt to create a proper play in which the wastrel Aladdin, a Jamie Oliver soundalike who just wants to be "rich and famous" without putting in the graft, is a real cause of concern for his widowed mother. However there is an uncomfortable tension between the serious and the silly, and some conflict in the show's attitude towards wealth and riches - happiness seems to be built on Aladdin's magical equivalent of a lottery win.
The show is a visual treat with its tree dripping gems and a palace that bears more than a passing resemblance to Harrods. To be really satisfying it needs more emotional density, not just in Aladdin's relationship with his mother but also with his street urchin friends and with a princess whose speechifying often sounds like reality TV claptrap. So, like its hero, it's hardly perfect, but it has charm and the clever depiction of the genie using shadow puppetry has a wild, witty playfulness that is sometimes lacking elsewhere.
· Until January 28. Box office: 0117 987 7877
