I AM not ‘ogre-doing’ the praise when I say Shrek the Musical is utterly brilliant!

Now enjoying a three-week run at Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre, it’s a monster show set to turn other venues green with envy.

Coming direct from London – a decade after the Oscar winning Shrek the Movie – this epic UK and Ireland tour production has taken the tale of the bright green ogre to another level.

It expands on the film story of the reclusive creature, swamp-dwelling ogre who agrees to rescue Fiona from the tower and a fire breathing dragon – we learn how both were abandoned, aged 7, by their parents, and so it expands on the pathos too.

But best of all, tour director Nigel Harman (who played Lord Farquaad in the West End) has heightened the comedy too.

A wonderful mix of both adult and children’s humour, it sends up all our favourite fairy tales and nursery rhymes too.

It’s a fast-moving show, brimming with comic one-liners and visual gags and every member of this exceptional cast work their socks off.

Shrek, played by Dean Chisnall, is totally believable: big, green, not very pretty and highly flatulent – but more loveable than a big cuddly teddy-bear by the end.

Bronté Barbé has only just taken over the role of Princess Fiona but she gels perfectly with her unlikely beau in some highly comical scenes, including their very funny farting and burping competition.

And what a cool, comical and amusingly slightly effeminate Donkey we have in Idriss Kargbo, who has all the right funky moves.

The stand-out performance, of this fabulously well cast show however, came from Gerard Carey as the villainous, lascivious and vertically-challenged Lord Farquaad. He spends the whole show on his knees – which is admirable enough in itself – but the physical comedy he brings from this is just amazing.

Whether it is his quick, haughty walk or the way he lustily crosses or rubs his funny little legs - legs that seem to take on a whole language and life of their own, despite being fake, his body movements have us in hysterics.

Add to this a supporting cast of fairytale characters including Three Blind Mice in stockings and carrying white sticks, tap dancing rats, a large, low flying dragon, a tortured gingerbread man, and a cross-dressing wolf, it is a laugh-a-minute.

Shrek is a show for all the family but it has so many comic layers with its wealth of double-entendre and ironic wit that I feel it is even far more fun for the adults than its original younger audience.

The comedy remains more memorable than the music, although there are some great musical highlights, including ‘Freak Flag’ whose lyric “let your freak flag fly” sums up the entire moral of the show – that we should celebrate our diversity.

And then as the show reaches its final happy-ever-after conclusion it ends on a fantastic high with the finale song – The Monkees’ ‘I’m a Believer’, which had all the audience up dancing and singing.

Shrek the Musical runs at The Mayflower, Southampton, until Sunday, July 26.

Booking info: mayflower.org.uk or 02380 711811

HILARY PORTER