IN the words of John Mills in Ice Cold In Alex, later appropriated for a Carlsberg advert: “Worth waiting for.”

Artistic director Damian Cruden had taken an early decision to postpone the opening night of the first ever stage version of Gerald Durrell’s childhood memoir from last Friday to Tuesday, such were the show’s technical requirements.

The delay was never a case of last-minute doubts or hitches, more a desire to have the show right before letting Durrell’s animals loose on the York public on this season’s In The Round setting.

Tuesday’s premiere certainly passed the technical test, although the first half will surely be trimmed from its over-long 90 minutes now that everything is in place and the staging has caught up with Janys Chambers’s superb script.

She had first adapted Durrell’s novel for the radio in 2005 and has started afresh for the stage premiere, in which the eccentric Durrell family’s exit from enervated England to a new life on the Greek island of Corfu in 1935 is narrated by an ever-present adult Gerry (Simeon Truby).

His language is as full of imagery as Dylan Thomas, taking flight on the incidental music of Christopher Madin, who at times evokes Ralph Vaughan Williams no less.

Fascinated by (misbehving) animals and insects, young Gerry is often by his side, acting out what the older Gerry says, but mute until a key moment at the very end. This was not entirely successful on the first night, being too reminiscent of a ventriloquist’s dummy, but as long as the three boys sharing this role are animated in their expressions, it will work.

This is the only false note struck in a fabulously fun, funny poignant story of a family trying but struggling to rub along with the equally unpredictable locals amid the dying embers of the old Empire.

The story is stuffed with wonderful characters, English and Greek and canine in the case of newly-wed Michael Lambourne’s scene-stealing Roger the Dog.

The Durrells are a scream, always on the move to another villa, and as effervescent as Wilde or Coward’s creations. Cynical brother Larry, blessed with outstanding comic timing from Jonathan Race, would not be out of place in their plays, nor would Julia Watson’s Mother. Stephen Billington is impossibly boyish and beard-free as the gun-fixated Leslie after his burdened John Proctor in The Crucible and Emily Pithon’s Margo is delightfully frothy.

Gordon Kane’s Spiro is a forerunner of Fawlty Towers’ Manuel and the multiple role-playing Martin Barrass, Helen Kay, Michael Roberts, Simon Yadoo and especially Laura Cox are all colourful contributors.

Part of the show’s triumph is what goes on out of sight, beneath the stage: the equivalent of a swan’s legs pumping away as trapdoors open, doorways pop up, table legs emerge and Race’s Larry re-emerges, trousers soaked, on Jane Linz Roberts’s island set. Then add the multitude of props, in particular the animal puppets made by Beckie May and the masks by TongueTied Theatre and Anna Kestevan.

The physical comedy setpieces are better than in last year’s The Wind In The Willows, the verbal wit keeps on coming, as do the visual delights and even some magic realism, but is it a family show? Yes, although adults looking back on childhood innocence and bygone English days abroad will enjoy it most.

My Family And Other Animals, York Theatre Royal, In The Round Ensemble Season, until June 25. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk