A bug's strife

Once upon a time, there was a crowd of fresh-faced pantomime characters - Jack, Aladdin, Cinderella and Red Riding Hood - who…

Once upon a time, there was a crowd of fresh-faced pantomime characters - Jack, Aladdin, Cinderella and Red Riding Hood - who were just too good to be true. They'd been around for many, many years and, in the eyes of the thoroughly modern Millennium Bug and its two spiky-haired sidekicks, it was high time that they were beamed into cyberspace and kept there until midnight on New Year's Eve, when they could be dispensed into the ether forever. This is the premise of Michael Poynor's space-age interactive pantomime for the Ulster Theatre Company, which has transformed the steel-balconied BT Studio into a vibrant performance space, hung with neon-lit scaffolding under which the audience sits on all four sides of a raised stage, as though deep inside a giant computer.

If this new arrangement threatens to inhibit Poynor's energetic cast, it certainly does not show. Sean Kearns's skirt-raising dame Mother Goose leads the way in collective eyeballing, in two hours of helterskelter storytelling, set to Mark Dougherty's oh-so-catchy tunes and Martin Wong's high-speed dance routines. There are some familiar faces - Michael Magee and Paraic Duignan among them - and one or two new ones, not least Belfast's Andrew Moore, who caused such a stir in his debut performance in Gary Mitchell's punk musical Energy. And, as usual, the whole thing comes gift wrapped in Elroy Ashmore's gorgeous, zany, cartoon-coloured set, which provides plenty of fun and interest when the storyline goes over the top of some young concentrations .

Once Upon a Time runs until January 22nd. To book phone Belfast 334455

Jane Coyle

Jane Coyle is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in culture