We hadn’t even made it as far as the thorny brambles - let alone The Little Kingdom - before toddlers were waving manickly at an empty Marlowe Theatre stage.

The familiar opening beats of the Ben and Holly theme tune was the only curtain-up-cue they required for our afternoon performance.

Out jumped Princess Holly and Ben Elf to the gasps and spontaneous applause of a theatre full of youngsters high on sugar, school holidays and a suitable amount of suspense.

Taking toddlers and young children to the theatre can be a tricky choice – tickets aren’t akin to the cost of an ice cream in the park, they may not sit still or pay attention and there’s always a risk the sugar high wears off in favour of their scheduled afternoon slumber.

But the pace of Ben & Holly is good, fast enough to hold their attention but slow enough to build a plot for them to follow.

And as the characters help Nanny Plum collect a tooth in her job as tooth fairy the set moves through the Little Kingdom, Lucy’s bedroom and Nanny Plum’s house, frequently giving the young audience something different to see as the story unfolds.

Alongside appearances from the Wise Old Elf, King Thistle and of course Gaston the ladybird, there is a raft of songs and actions to give fidgeting feet a chance to move.

A game of hide and seek between Ben & Holly in the opening scene (complete with panto style cries of ‘behind you’) is just the first of many opportunities for audience participation – the most popular of which seemed to be a rendition of I Am the Music Man which was going great until it came to making the sound of the ladybird at which point most of the parents realised where they were and that this was no longer a disco in the late 1980s and sat back to allow the younger generation to take a turn.

And as far as introducing that next generation to the theatre goes – an afternoon outing to The Little Kingdom is a very good place to start.

Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom runs at the Marlowe Theatre until Thursday, July 30.