Once mince pies start featuring on supermarket shelves and ice on my windscreen, my heart sinks like a turkey’s.

However, Chipping Norton’s Robinson Crusoe has revitalised my critic’s jaded soul like a defibrillator, pumping it up with a real sense of wonder and admiration at the pure hilarity, joy, casting, and fun it’s panto has produced. On appraisal, picking over its bones on the way home, I deduced this was because every factor was pitch perfect from the casting to the music, the lyrics to the set, the story-line to the jokes, costumes to location. No clichés or corniness here, nothing lazy or predictable. Instead the production team (script by Andrew Pollard, directed by John Terry) wiped the slate clean and started from scratch. Yes Robinson Crusoe, ably played by the likeable Craig Rhys Barlow, a fishmonger, is desperate to go to sea to seek his fortune and follow in his departed father’s seafaring footsteps, and yes his mother Cassie is the dame, but the sheer enjoyment they create, the sharp, snappy script, the brilliant acting, the original songs, and the hilarity, carry you along with them as they embark on the adventure of a lifetime, joining the crew of the Saucy Nancy.

His love interest, The Honourable Polly Perkins, who stows away instead of being sidelined for being a girl, is utterly loveable, as the pair are constantly defied by Betty ‘Bad Dog’ Babcock the Pirate Queen, who hates children and pensioners (“we were glad to get a mention actually,” I heard a grandfather remark) and her band of pirates comprised of Chipping Norton’s finest young performers.

My favourite scene was pure genius, a riposte of raging speed between Cassie, resplendent in a PVC ballgown, gloves and a fish platter headdress, and her beau the captain Wallace Windblower (cue fart jokes and foghorns) who were declaring their love over Cassie’s fish stall, while including the name of each and every fish in the pacy dialogue until we were all howling with laughter, and we travelled willingly without a self conscious or wry smile in sight.

It was a treat from start to finish and I have never enjoyed a panto as much. Until Jan 8. chippingnortontheatre.com or 01608 642350. 5/5