If Cinderella is not everyone's favourite pantomime, it is certainly mine. What a joy it is, then, to see so perfect a production of it this Christmas at the Wycombe Swan. The brilliant Brian Conley (pictured) is its star, and will be the big draw for many of the punters. But this is very far from being a one-man show; there are excellent performances throughout the cast, including a contribution from ventriloquist Dawson Chance, with his tortoise friend Willy, that plays Brian's wise-cracking Buttons a very close second for comedy.

It is good to see the role of the Fairy - so often something of a cipher - being beefed up here, if the metaphor does not seem inappropriate applied to one as petite as Kerry Winter. This Fairy also serves as narrator, and it was a pity, at the performance I saw, to find some of her important words drowned by over-loud rock music. (Elsewhere musical director Barry Robinson and his team deliver just what is required in an eclectic and melodic selection of tunes.) This is a version of the story that dispenses, like Rossini's opera, with the wicked stepmother. There is no shortage of wickedness, however, from the Ugly Sisters as presented by Nigel Ellacott and Peter Robbins. Nor of elegant finery; their exotic apparel is as astonishing as anything I have seen in panto. One dress, designed as a deckchair, even includes a cheeky glimpse of bottom.

Michelle Potter shines as the lovely Cinderella; Dean Chisnall gives us the necessarily handsome Prince Charming - a witty one, too, as we see in his exchanges with Jody Crosier's Dandini.

There is colour and charm - look at those winsome animals in the Royal Forest! And when the transformation scene comes, with a pair of white Shetland ponies to propel Cinders to the ball, there cannot surely be a dry eye in the house.

Cinderella continues until January 6. Tickets: 01494 512000 (www.wycombeswan.co.uk).