Hansel and Gretel

Down in the forest, something is stirring. Grassy glades and crystal-clear pools can just as easily turn misty and sinister. It is certainly not a place for two lost children to be wandering around alone. The fact that the children's dreadful parents have decided to abandon them here indefinitely is what has always given the Grimm Brothers' tale a dark, uneasy edge. In their crisp, sharply-focused production for the Lyric Theatre, director Karl Wallace and musical director/composer Paul Boyd give full recognition to the fact that the best children's stories are often the scariest, skilfully contriving to pit good against evil, rough magic against common sense, in a witty, clearly-told story with a suitably wholesome ending.

Gary McCann's sinuous wooden set looks wonderful under the effects of Roger Nicholson's sugar-coloured lighting, its little pop-up passages, doorways and hidey-holes sheltering all kinds of exciting, spooky secrets. It is hard to believe that the storytelling is down to just five excellent actors. The squabbling siblings are played by Jason Heppenstall and Angie Waller, who stepped in for injured Georgia Simpson at a day's notice and flew faultlessly through the evening without a moment's hesitation.

The marvellous Sheelagh O'Kane is, in turns, screeching mother, fussy nurse and a slinky, sultry witch, straight out of the Josephine Baker school of power dressing. Karl O'Neill switches between hen-pecked husband, depressed duck Francis Drake and incurably bouncy Fats the Frog. And over it all hovers the dream-spinning presence of birdman Gregory Peck, in a charismatic performance by John Davis.

Hansel and Gretel is at the Lyric Theatre until January 21st. To book phone Belfast 381081.