Review: Madame Galina - Battle Star Galactica, Lighthouse, Poole

LIGHTHOUSE'S burgeoning reputation for presenting alternative and innovative shows can only be enhanced by this fabulous one-man/woman tour de force.

Madame Galina's very existence, especially considering her proportions, is an achievement of suspended disbelief.

She is on a cultural mission to Britain in a doomed attempt to have the natives appreciate ballet rather than pantomime.

Even worse, she is about to be inspected and has only a single lesson to squeeze in a course that should last eight or she will lose her grant.

With immaculately shaven armpits, huge knickers and oozing talcum powder, Madame Galina steers her audience through the intimate details of ballet's greatest techniques, from mime to pas de deux - for which three lucky members of her adoring class undertake suitably arduous auditions.

An updated rendition of Giselle and a final demonstration of balletic mastery had the house roaring their adoration along with their laughter.

Madame Galina has won many admirers in sleepy Poole who for a few moments revelled in the artistry of the Bolshoi.