NOT one word is uttered in Stomp, but spread the word quickly, you can't beat this drumming show for exhilarating impact.

Children weary of ballet with granny and the annual pantomime outing will love it. Girls with an eye for muscular men who can do more than whip their kit off to Hot Chocolate will love it. Anyone who ever drummed their fingers on the top of a biscuit barrel or shook a box of matches will love it.

The world already loves the show that puts the hit into hit show.

Created by Brighton percussionist Luke Cresswell and Yorkshireman Steve McNicholas, Stomp has been performed in 38 countries in its 13-year history, and now York has joined the Stomp club for a week-long run in the only performances north of Watford on the present itinerary.

Where there's muck, there's brass, the saying goes. In Stomp, where's there's garbage, dustbins and an old building site, there's music (and brass to the tune of £4.5 million in the West End alone). Against a mesh of scaffolding and discarded signs, a man in dusted Army and Navy store clothing and work boots starts brushing the stage.

The audience falls silent, the broom goes to work, and suddenly the workman (Rory Flores) begins to build a rhythm from the union of wood and brush and floor.

Soon, seven more brushes are to join him as the cast of six men and two women sets in motion the dynamic drill and thrill of madly-energetic yet crisply-disciplined percussion and dance.

Never mind, va va voom, here is va va broom, and there is more, so much more, to come.

Paul Bend links the percussive routines with his silent-movie brand of Stan Laurel comic pathos, the skinny runt of the drumming litter forever having his moment snatched away from him by the big boys and the girls who could whip Lara Croft's butt.

Often led by Dane Peter Nielsen, each routine starts in wonderment and discovery as the junk and clutter of urban life are tested for their percussive quality, rhythmic prowess or musical potential.

It could be a symphony of flickering flames from the flick and click of Zippo lighters or the clatter of dustbin lids; it could be a pen tapping on teeth or soft tubing whose hollow sounds make music as joyous as the Fun Boy Three's It Ain't What You Do It's The Way That You Do It. Or even a kitchen sink, four of them in a line, each full of water and pots and pans for maximum splash.

Stomp is 100 unbroken minutes of percussive paradise. Unbeatable.

Box office: 0870 606 3595.

Updated: 09:48 Tuesday, March 16, 2004