EVEN the programme cover is the stuff of humour.

Lip Service, "the nation's favourite literary lunatics", use a cut-out of a cute moggy mugshot on the front and a feline needlepoint pattern on the back with colour options, including hovel grey and sick yellow.

Very tall woman Maggie Fox (6'2") and comedy companion Sue Ryding (5'3") savour committing gloriously irreverent acts against the great, the saintly and the over-rated. This time, the victim is the girlie girl's favourite, American author Louisa May Alcott; Sue loved Little Women as a child; Maggie, being tall, never read it until the chance to send it up proved irresistible.

"It's so sanctimonious, so twee... just awful... and they're Americans," came her judgement. On Martin Johns's amusingly naff Christmas-card set, with its clever use of cut-outs, folding features and erratic, misbehaving props, Fox and Ryding go to work with customary comic inspiration, yet somehow retain the essence of a revered text.

As ever, they find themselves outnumbered by a surfeit of characters: a staple of all their shows that teeter on the edge of collapse or disaster (in the tradition of Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, or Eric and Ernie in one of Ernie Wise's plays).

Ryding always wanted to be would-be writer Jo - the tomboy one based on Alcott in this American Civil War domestic drama about the March sisters - and she is granted her wish, busily striving to keep the story on track.

The ever anarchic Fox is challenged with playing Jo's sisters, sensible Meg and consumptive Beth, and between Fox and Ryding they must construct the fourth sister, vain and silly Amy. Starter-kit puppetry skills come to the fore, also handy when the story has more fluffy toys than a Christmas shop window.

What about the men, you say? Ah yes, Lip Service ask a man with a handsome beard (Matthew Vaughan) to play Marmee, the mother. As for the men in the play, Fox and Ryding play them too, with the aid of a mannequin and myriad use of a window ledge.

The comic timing is exquisite, the cheeky charm a constant delight, and Very Little Women is a very big success.

Very Little Women, Lip Service, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: tel 01904 623568.

Updated: 10:11 Wednesday, October 13, 2004