Free-Rain and director David Atfield have certainly put together a magnificent school holiday show in The Little Mermaid.

This musical is based on the Disney cartoon and sidesteps Hans Christian Andersen's haunting original tale in favour of a rollicking yarn, full of songs and dancing and humour. Sure, its heroine, the mermaid Ariel (Mikayla Williams), has to trade her voice for the legs wicked witch Ursula (Louiza Blomfield) gives her instead of a tail when she goes on land in pursuit of handsome Prince Eric (Tim Dal Cortivo). But although there is the odd dark moment the show is always going to be headed for the harbour of a happy finish for all except the villainous.

Williams makes an enchanting and strong heroine of Ariel, the mermaid who defies her father king Triton (a dignified Steve Galinec) to explore the world above the sea that fascinates her so. Her six more conforming sisters (Philippa Murphy, Lisa Tredinnick, Silvana Moro, Rebecca Mitchell, Cara Bessey and Kaitlin Nihill) are an impressive team of rival mermaid siblings and the actors also double amusingly as six land princesses in search of Prince Eric's favour. Unfortunately for them Dal Cortivo's sunny-voiced and good-humoured Prince Eric has no ears for any voice but Ariel's.

Among Ariel's friends Fraser Findlay charms as Sebastian the music-teaching crab, Jake Willis is a touchingly shy Flounder and Tony Falla steals scenes as Scuttle, the cheerful seagull with a lovely line in malapropisms and generally strange vocabulary. Thanks to Michelle Heine's crisp choreography he and his mates even get to tap dance. Prince Eric is guided more prosaically by his sensible guardian Grimsby (Colin Milner).

For a moment things turn very surreal as David Cannell's Chef Louis darkly evokes Sweeny Todd in the gruesome number Les Poissons where the fate of fish on land is clearly to be chopped up for food. That's almost more frightening than Ursula and her plots and spells but Blomfield's underwater witch is the necessary glamorous villainess in fine voice and in fabulous costume, backed up by luminous eel sidekicks Flotsam (David Santolin) and Jetsam (Jamie Winbank).

Cate Clelland's designs include not only spectacular costumes but old-fashioned painted scenery to fascinate the kids that goes up and down and sideways, augmented by some imaginative lighting design by Phil Goodwin. Ian McLean leads a solid pit orchestra. It all feels like a bit of good old-fashioned panto in its energy. And the whole enterprise has a genial spirit to it that deserves full holiday houses.