Traditional pantomime at its best is offered by the Oxford Playhouse in its colourful good-natured and always hugely entertaining new production of Aladdin. Director Peter Duncan is well-versed in keeping family audiences happy, as he showed in last year's Dick Whittington, and the practised hand of this very versatile entertainer has fashioned an even jollier show for 2007.

Proportion is of paramount importance in panto, and here we are supplied with the right amounts of everything. This means a modicum of romance - nothing too soppy, thank you - in the mooning of young Aladdin (Michael Steedon in an impressive professional debut) over his princess (Charlotte Warren). Hissable villainy (and some exceptionally well-managed magic) comes courtesy of Miles Western's Abanazar. But since we would far rather be laughing than booing, it is on the services of the laughter-makers that this show's success largely depends.

Here we find a well-judged trio of comic turns. Simon Green, who played Sarah the Cook last year, returns in even more outrageous fashions as Widow Twankey, from whom no man (even those in the audience!) is safe. While Howard Gossington's Wishie Washie strikes up an easy rapport with youngsters in the stalls, their parents are more likely to savour the rich comic contribution from Fraser Collins's Genie, the strutting embodiment of the cheesiness of 1970s disco. Emerging from the lamp to complain that his long confinement within has "played havoc with my Afro", he goes on to demonstrate that it has certainly done nothing to restrict the vigour of his movements or the power of his voice. His is a star performance indeed.

Musically, the show provides a great deal to be enjoyed, with a three-strong team in the pit (including musical director Darren Reeves) providing a wonderful accompaniment to the many familiar numbers.

On till January 13 - and not to be missed.