What a gal: Tobie Cronje’s fabulous Dame Nora Nursey. Photograph courtesy Joburg Theatre.

If you or your child don’t mind hectic lashings of strobe lights and multiple doses of high impact bass noise, you’re in for a splendid treat at this year’s pantomime in Johannesburg, Sleeping Beauty, directed by Janice Honeyman.

Featuring the inimitable Tobie Cronjé, as Dame Nora Nursey, who almost steals the show with his utterly delicious persona, the show’s a non-stop rollercoaster of broadly one dimensional and blatantly commercially-hooked  jokes, with oft nimble wordage, quick and rude innuendo, crisp and lovely choreography and a sense of cohesion that is second to none, ticking all the boxes of the panto genre, which reaches all the way back to 16th century England where it was born. As it should, it brings a tale of romance and terror, trickery and magic that we all know, inevitably making the pretty stars – Christopher Jaftha and Nicole Fortuin as the golden couple – work much harder to gain audience attention, than the ones more wildly and colourfully exuding character – including a delightful Jester Crackerjack (Clive Gilson) and Wicked Fairy Kakkamella Khakibos (Michelle Botha).

But like anything with too many special effects, or a dessert with too much sugar, it suffers a casualty in the watchability department because of those wretched lights, ripping their way through your sensibilities to ensure that you are suitably startled every time a joke is cracked or the bad fairy (Botha in immensely fine form) appears on the scene to do some khakibos mischief. Oh, and there are some tricks which got the littlies seriously screaming with what sounded like terror that didn’t really get laughed away.

Having said that, there’s a fluorescent pink crispness and a sense of cohesion that makes this panto stand out from previous manifestations, featuring, as it does, everything from pretty little ballerinas to cultural references that reach from the 1976 American film Network to our president’s latest bit of parliamentary bluster, but it is nevertheless a dire pity that effectively, the magical measuring tool for these lights that blast directly into your eyes, seems to have been broken in the production’s recipe. The end of year pantomime at the Nelson Mandela theatre over the last 20-odd years, has become such a powerful fixture in the calendar of Johannesburg that people book a year in advance for it. It effectively signifies that the end of the year is nigh and that after a long series of challenges, the broader community can kick back its collective heels and have a rest. But if you’re prone to migraine or seizure, don’t go: while the theatre is responsible in warning that there are strobes, if you close your eyes every time an invasive streak of synthetic lightning blasts its way through your sensibilities, you might miss almost the whole show.

• Sleeping Beauty: The Pantomime of your Dreams! is written and directed by Janice Honeyman, with directorial assistance from Timothy Le Roux, features design by Bronwen Lovegrove (costumes), Graham McLusky (lighting), Trevor Peters (sound), Marga Sandler (musical director) and Nicol Sheraton (choreographer). It is performed by Matthew Berry, Michelle Botha, Tobie Cronjé, Kiruna-Lind Devar, Keaton Ditchfield, Daniel Fisher, Nicole Fortuin, Clive Gilson, Suzaan Helberg, Christopher Jaftha, Bisi Bangiwe Kajobela, Michele Levin, Sean John Louw, Venolia Manale, Timothy Moloi, Candida Mosoma, Tshepo Ncokoane, Sarah Richard, Dale Scheepers, Dionne Song, LJ Urbani, Maryanne van Eyssen and Mary-Jane Zimri, featuring dancers Robert van den Aardweg, Tayla Anderson, Alexia Bazzo, Michaela Fairon, Alexa Lipchin, Winita Main, Leroy Mokgatle, Tyla Amber Spieth, Bobby Strong and Crystal Viljoen and musicians Deon Kruger, Sipumao Trueman Lucwaba, Drew Reinstra and PW van der walt, at the Nelson Mandela Theatre, Braamfontein, until December 30. Visit joburgtheatre.com