WHEN the tight squeeze is on, and you keep your principal cast to seven, who are you going to cull? Hard lines, Baron Hardup, always a poor role anyway.

It makes not a jot of difference because the rest more than make up for his exit, apparently of the permanent variety as we learn of his death at the start.

From dead man to Stedman, Tim Stedman, the strawberry-cheeked, helium-voiced, lantern-jawed buffoon, who is celebrating his 15th year in the Harrogate company. Director Phil Lowe and co-writer David Bown build the show around him, as ever, and Stedman's Buttons duly fires off his fusillade of funny weapons, from the world's worst cracker jokes to rearranging the order of words in sentences while still clinging to the wreckage of sense; from creating new names such as Boroughoroughoroughbridge to homing in on the occupant of a front row-seat to be his assistant/victim for the show's duration.

He is, in every sense, in the thick of it, and in the absence of his usual second-half setpiece – where he reprises everything that has gone before in the plot at breakneck pace with silent- movie physicality – he makes up for it with a series of the cheesiest gags ever on the the theme of cheese. Grate stuff!

He has an added string to his bow this year: the bathos of being hopelessly, forlornly, in love with Lucy-Jane Quinlan's Cinderella, his bestest best friend, who is rather keener on making out with Colin Kiyani's fine-singing Prince Charming. Katy Dean has plenty of fun as a Welsh Fairy Godmother, who must pass a test to regain her fairy wings, and also as Dandini in the disguise of the Prince.

Maxine Fone's fierce and frightful Baroness of Boroughbridge amuses as a kind of pier-end Cher tribute, and better still are the Ugly Sisters double act of Philip Stewart's Neeta and David Westbrook's Harry. Sometimes Ugly Sisters can clutter up Cinderella with little more than costume setpieces – sisters doing it just for themselves – but this sister act has the dialogue, the physicality and the nuisance factor to make a big, big impact.

Never more so than when Stewart takes on the guise of Harrogate resident and charity fundraiser Danny Mills, or "journeyman right back with 19 caps for England and now fifth or sixth choice on the Match Of The Day sofa", as Stewart calls him, by now wearing a skull cup with tufts of blue hair sticking out. This is surely as left-field as pantomime can be, but the Mills routine is a boon to this sometimes bizarre yet often beautiful show.

Foxton's set designs are as witty and pretty as ever, especially the yellow bike from Le Grand Depart, discarded in Hardup Hall's malfunctioning fountain, while the Team Mighty and Team Danger ensembles are well drilled by choreographer Amie Liddle.

The anarchic-spirited writing team of Lowe and Bown are as topical as ever, whether in several Tour de France references or their mockery of the latest Harrogate follies, or in their pick of songs from Miley Cyrus's The Climb to Frozen's Let It Go and the compulsory Happy.

Happy you will be.

Cinderella, Harrogate Theatre, until January 18 2015. Box office: 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk