THE Fantasticks is the world's longest-running musical, but try to remember the last time you saw this crafty pastiche.

Broadway's equivalent of The Mousetrap opened in 1960 and has had the occasional dalliance with the West End, but Hannah Chissick's revival at Harrogate Theatre is a rare northern chance to encounter the "one with the wall".

After her celebrations of song in Fats Waller's Aint Misbehavin' and two Sondheim revues, The Fantasticks is Chissick's first narrative-driven musical in Harrogate, and working in tandem once more with choreographer Nick Winston, she has come up with another production full of vitality, fun and winning performances.

The aforementioned wall is the distinguishing feature of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's musical, and in Philip Witcomb's design it takes on the characteristics of the Trojan horse, with doorways and hatches from which characters emerge. In the tradition of French farce, Chissick uses doors as a vista for comic surprise, and here that deceptive wall magnifies the plot's relish for illusion. Likewise, flowers and vegetables spring out of the floor as if by magic.

The wall has been erected by plotting fathers and gardening enthusiasts Hucklebee (Nicholas Lumley) and Bellomy (Morgan Deare). They may carry on like grouchy Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau but are in league, hoping the enforced separation of nave Matt and Luisa will ensure they fall in love despite the oldies' faux protestations.

Romeo And Juliet with a joker's twist, this tale of young love runs about as smoothly as an outback dirt-track for Matt (classically handsome Dean Stobbart) and Luisa (the utterly butterly Sophie Bould from Putting It Together). Bandit cum narrator El Gallo is disruptive in the manner of Shakespeare's Puck (although Alistair Robbins is more reminiscent of Antonio Banderas's Puss In Boots in Shrek 2), and thespian double act Henry and Mortimer (Stuart Sherwin and the scene-stealing Tim Stedman) have a habit of turning up for further comic distraction.

Nothing should be taken at surface value, so Chissick's production can cheekily marry the music hall setting with Georgian costumes and modern Broadway ballads with fulsome use of Harrogate Theatre's Victorian theatricality, ornate boxes and all. Off the wall in every way.

Box office: 01423 502116.

Updated: 11:45 Wednesday, April 06, 2005