SUZY Cooper began her York Theatre Royal pantomime career in Jack And The Beanstalk, and so did Joanne Heywood. Now the southern principal girl and the principal boy from York have that Bean There, Done That feeling because they are starring in Jack And The Beanstalk once more, in a case of sticking to their principals.

Yet Suzy might never have joined the Theatre Royal merriment and mayhem in 1993 but for the need for a late change of cast. "I got a phone call from my agent saying someone had dropped out of playing principal girl at York, and would I audition. My initial response was 'Well, why was I not up for it in the first place?!"

Rather than taking her bat home, however, Suzy did attend the London auditions but even then the signs were not encouraging. "I was the last one of the day, and I remember this girl coming up and saying: 'Oh well, good luck; they've obviously cast it already'."

The girl turned out to be wrong. Suzy did impress the on-looking Berwick Kaler, even if her audition piece hit a hitch. "I had to sing, and I chose Cinderella's Song from Into The Woods, but I had to stop in the middle because I'd got it wrong," she recalls. "On reflection, it wasn't the best song to sing for an audition as it's by Sondheim, although Stephen Keeling, who was one of Sondheim's protgs was playing the piano, so at least that did make it better!"

What was Berwick's reaction's to Suzy's unfortunate grinding to a halt? "He just thought it was hysterical." So hysterical, in fact, that Suzy Cooper was signed up to play Jill.

She has been back for every Theatre Royal panto since then, all except last year when she was recording two episodes of Casualty - and that was another occasion with a memorable audition.

"I normally only get a job after I don't think I'm going to get it or if I don't want it, and with Casualty I knew I really needed that job but I swear I was drunk for the audition!"

Not intentionally drunk, you understand, but drunk nevertheless from an unplanned good night before. "I'm not good at getting drunk!" she jokes. "Anyway, I read the best I'd ever read for a part, in a haze of alcohol, precisely because I was relaxed - and I'm sure I got that first York panto after that girl had said 'Oh, it's gone, someone's already got it' and again I'd relaxed."

For Joanne Heywood, relaxation was definitely not on the cards when she auditioned for her first professional pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk at York Theatre Royal, Christmas 1985, at the age of 19. "I was still in my final year - I was due to graduate in 1986 - on the musical theatre course at the Guildford School of Acting, and I was so nervous because I knew this would be the job to secure me my Equity card."

She succeeded, landing a role in the chorus as a ferret - or ferret puppet handler, more precisely - and that show sowed the seeds of one her ambitions. "I remember saying at the time 'I want to be Jack, and I want to climb the beanstalk'. I used watch Jack every night, thinking 'I want to do that'."

Now, playing Jack this year, Joanne is indeed hitting the theatrical heights each night, strapped into a harness, climbing up the side of the beanstalk to one of the boxes...and laddering her tights.

Thankfully, she does not suffer vertigo. Instead she relished her preparations for climbing duty. "I like any adventure, so I went on the climbing wall at the Barbican a couple of times with Matt Noddings the Theatre Royal production manager and that has to be harder than the panto climb as you have to climb with your fingertips. The one difficulty with this climb is getting from the proscenium arch in the box, but I do enjoy it," says Joanne, who first performed at the Theatre Royal as a Munchkin in The Wizard Of Oz at the age of ten during her York schooldays.

Whereas Joanne had no worries about climbing, Suzy admits to initial fears on returning to the panto fray after a year away. She had been in York since late-summer, playing Mustardseed and Tom Snout in A Midsummer Night's Dream and the icy la Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses in the autumn repertory season, yet the demands of pantomime, and a bantering Berwick Kaler pantomime in particular, are very different.

"It's an odd performance art," she says. "I was really worried for the first few days of rehearsals. I felt I couldn't do it any more. I felt I hadn't got it any more."

Thankfully, those fears soon dissipated, Suzy felt part of the Theatre Royal pantomime family once more, part of the house Jack re-built.

Now she and Joanne can enjoy the mad thrill that is pantomime until February 2. Joanne sums up perfectly the adrenaline-fuelled challenge ahead: "Once you get out there on stage, it's like falling down a mountain," she says. "You can't fall gently. You just have to fall!"

For tickets, ring 01904 623568.