Grand Opera House director Derek Nicholls has demonstrated a shrewd combination of showmanship and restraint in his choice of millennium Christmas show, opting for J.M. Barrie's tale of the mixed-up boy who refuses to grow up and has established a kingdom of eternal youth in faraway Neverland. While Nicholls and his production team have pulled out all the stops in terms of visual spectacle, stage effects, wraparound auditorium lighting, a fresh new score played live by Mark Dougherty's band and a large cast of leading characters, they do not at any point lose sight of the essential element of storytelling nor allow it to be submerged by pointless comic turns or celebrity appearances.

It is the sly, black Belfast humour of May McFettridge's slinkily-clad Magical Mermaid that gets the loudest laughs, coming as it does straight from her hefty shoulder and gaping, gaptoothed mouth. Another local comic, Paddy Jenkins, provides her perfect foil as the gormless Smee, sidekick to Ray Meagher's Aussie Captain Hook.

Pert-faced, shock-haired Sonia could do with a dash more guile and cunning in her mischievously appealing Peter, while Michelle Chilton's angelic, goody-two shoes Wendy and Emma Dodd's impudent, roller-blading Tinkerbell strike just the right note. All together, it makes for one of the most dazzling and theatrically satisfying Christmas extravaganzas in many a shake of a crocodile's tail.