My 13-year-old friend, Masako, suggested going to see Return To The Forbidden Planet, the sci-fi space musical based on The Tempest; a spurious premise for a show, it seemed, and not one that particularly appealed on a wet, windy Monday night.

And yet there I was a few hours later, dancing in the aisles of the New Theatre, conducting a strange move that involved much head patting and waving my arms in the air.

And yes, I must admit it, I was having a whale of a time.

The revival of RTTFP was long overdue, it being the 25 year anniversary tour, and luckily it hadn’t aged; the fantasy being so bizarre and unpredictable in the first place.

Set on a space ship, instead of Prospero’s island, the crew has to put up with endless meteor attacks, love triangles and alien invasions, all of which make them burst into song on a regular basis and quote Shakespearian verse ad nauseam, nicked from every play the good Bard ever wrote.

But in the same way that Mamma Mia’s songs were shoe-horned around a Greek island love story, so too the likes of Great Balls of Fire, This is a Man’s World, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Teenager in Love, Heard It Through the Grapevine, Johnny B Goode and Born To Be Wild, feature.

All are accompanied by an amazingly multi-talented cast who can sing, dance, act and play a dazzling array of instruments, including a great brass section and some amazing electric guitar solos, one of which was played by the spaceship cook’s teeth.

Hilariously tongue-in-cheek, Return To The Forbidden Planet also chucks in an awe-inspiring mixture of popular culture references, from Bond to Phantom Of The Opera and the 1950s sci-fi B-movies on which the show is based.

So if it was nonsense, it was good old-fashioned, hilarious, entertaining, feel-good, surreal, foot-tapping nonsense. And it went down a treat.

Return To The Forbidden Planet
New Theatre, Oxford
Until Saturday, April 4
Box office: 01865 320760 www.atgtickets.com/oxford