For children, but not vegetarians

Aunt Hettie has such an insatiable appetite for meat that simply entering a pet shop sets her predatory stomach rumbling. Be it an hors d'oeuvre-sized hamster or a three-course challenge such as a boa constrictor, she is salivating salaciously and waiting for the opportunity to murder.

David Crook's gruesome anti-heroine is part of the dishonourable literary tradition of witch-like aunts from Grimm's Fairy Tales to Roald Dahl. In Linda Marlowe's vivid production for small children, it is perhaps unsurprising - given Marlowe's Steven Berkoff connections - that Patti Love's performance as the evil aunt is a vibrantly physical celebration of humanity at its most grotesque.

Even a screaming toddler was silenced by her entrance and sat quietly through a play where her bullied nephew achieves unexpected revenge by buying an invisible monkey. Elisa Laghi's simian acrobatics provided an additional enjoyable diversion for children too young to engage with the wordplay.

One minor quibble is that Matthew Maude - who played the unfortunate nephew Zachary - appears in the height of current street fashion with his underpants showing over his trousers. It was a stylistic nicety that certainly passed over the head of the little girl behind me, who spent much of the first half anxiously asking her father if someone should inform him that his knickers were visible.

In all, a highly competent and accessible production for introducing children to theatre.

The Invisible Monkey