Aladdin, Old Vic, London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Sir Ian McKellen had such a ball last Christmas dolling up as a pantomime dame that clearly nothing short of house arrest would have stopped him from reprising his Widow Twankey in this revival of Aladdin at the Old Vic. "I enjoy being a girl," he hums, and that looks like the understatement of the decade as his Dame - ebulliently Northern, permanently randy and resembling the love child of Ena Sharples and Danny La Rue - slips into a succession of outrageous outfits that range from a frilly white Abba jumpsuit to a slinky Marlene Dietrich-style nightclub gown.

This Twankey hails from Wigan, where she was a leading light of am dram and could often be found "giving my all to the Student Prince". Still showbiz-mad in Old Peking, she can't get enough of the fact that she's back in front of an audience, and McKellen's enjoyment of her relish is infectious.

Sean Mathias's production has been updated. Acrobatic cops Hanky and Panky, must, for example, be the first male pantomime duo ever to announce their civil partnership. In contrast to the man playing her, the Dame takes a bit of persuading that this is acceptable. That irony is just one of the many theatrical in-jokes (references to other more legitimate Dames and to the length of Trevor Nunn's productions etc) which sometimes give the evening an air of being a meta-panto rather than a panto proper.

All pantomimes have gags that wink over the children's heads at the grown-ups. It's a question of proportion. Here Bille Brown's book feels unbalanced in favour of the adults. The script does not always observe the difference between traditional double entendre ("This has fallen out well," says Paul Grunert's Emperor, who is told to "put it back in again"), good clean filth (the Dame being informed that the "front porch could do with a good lick") and heavily contrived lewdness (as when Twankey, gathering laundry, invites a punter to "strip it off and toss it up - I'm always ready for a big load"). Presumably Chubby Brown himself would have blushed at the gags which (the programme says) were rejected as being "too risqué for the kids".

With a charming song-sheet sing-along in cod-Chinese, some spirited hissing and "behind you" sequences, and a magical set by John Napier, there is much here to keep tots and their older siblings happy.

To 22 January (0870 060 6628)