THERE is not time to count them out and count them in but, trust me, there are 100 actors, dancers, musicians and stage crew members taking part in the Grand Opera House Summer Youth Project.

The scale of Simon Barry's musical production hits you in the eye from the very start: the curtain rises on a stage crammed to the gills with young faces in assorted animal apparel, singing merrily of naughty Toad and his Jeremy Clarkson-style fixation with ever faster forms of travel.

On rolls Daniel Warmsley's amusingly timorous Mole, bespectacled, in brown buttoned suit and balaclava, to discover the joys of the river (the orchestra pit) and a new friendship with Ratty.

Dapper as ever in striped boating blazer and flannels, Ratty is played by...a girl. Yes indeed, Luddites. Claire Brett, back in York for the summer after her first year of drama course at Bath Spa University College, follows up last year's role of Tin Man in The Wizard Of Oz with another display of consummate cross-gender playing, with a hint of pantomime principal boy in her hands-on-hips stance.

Soon Badger joins the fun, although fun has never been a word associated with the stern and wise Badger in Kenneth Grahame's riparian tale.

Andrew McCarthy, in his oversized jacket and black and white trousers, captures his character's combination of the disapproving and avuncular, the caring and the gruff.

In the tradition of pantomime, the star turn enters last, in this case 22-year-old London actor - and Barry's assistant director, to boot - Dan Styles in the larger-than-life guise of Toad.

Ladies and gentleman, put your hands together for Mr Toad, the showman. "Poop, poop", goes Toad, resplendent in a music-hall comedian's rig of checked yellow and pink suit and green leggings, as he rushes around the stage in his green and yellow face paint and Elton John over-sized spectacles.

Styles is the Berwick Kaler of the piece, leading the show, setting its pace and providing much of its vim and laughter, with sterling support all around him, not only from Brett, Warmsley and McCarthy but Lisa Copland's kindly Mrs Mouse, dancing queen Emily Taylor's Gaoler's Daughter, Jamie Furby's Chief Weasel and Dawn Richmond-Gordon's world-weary, Brummie-voiced Horse.

Director Brett has freshened up his show's musical content with new additions, the best number being sung in show-stopping style by Livvy Evans's Bargewoman.

This is in essence a summer pantomime; panto scenery, audience participation and all. There is even a Christmas party climax to the first half, which must qualify as the first Noel of 2004.

Updated: 09:56 Friday, August 06, 2004