The three-week run of Starlight Express at the New Theatre in the spring of 2005 created many fans who will be eager to see it again now that it's back at the same venue over Christmas. This remarkable show is, after all, an easily acquired taste. One keen devotee - London postman Alan Newman - sat contentedly through the original London production 750 times.

Last time in Oxford the producers laid a special platform out into the audience in the style of a fashion show catwalk. This was designed to give something of the flavour of the musical as it was seen in London, where the roller-skating characters - railway locomotives, coaches and wagons - raced round the stalls on a special track. In truth, the device added very little to conventional staging, and I am not sorry to see it has now been dropped by director and choreographer Arlene Phillips.

There is, after all, no shortage of visual excitement in this splendidly designed (John Napier) and superbly lit (Howard Eaton) production. A lot of this is supplied by the magnificent costumes, which convincingly summon up - even for an ardent rail buff such as I - the giants of the track. These include our young steam engine hero Rusty (newcomer Kristofer Harding, pictured right with Gemma Atkins as Pearl) and his vainglorious opponents in the bid for railway supremacy, the diesel engine Greaseball (Tom Kanavan, pictured above) and the voltage-guzzling Electra (Mykal Rand).

The matter of who emerges as top train is settled in a series of dangerous races. These are again presented to us in the form of 3D films, for which audience members put on special glasses (as for certain feature films of the 1960s) and are rewarded by being thereby placed thrillingly amid the action. If the sight of everyone sitting around you in paper specs isn't already odd enough, wait till they start ducking the assorted objects that seem to be heading straight at them from the screen.

As in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber proves himself a consummate parodist, ranging effortlessly through the many varieties of pop music. My favourites remain the buxom Dinah's (Lucy-Jane Adcock) country and western take (à la Tammy Wynette) on U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D. and Poppa's Blues (Michael Samuels). Both owe much to the considerable wit of lyricist Richard Stilgoe, whose work makes one realise just how many everyday expressions derive from the world of railways.

Starlight Express - The 3rd Dimension continues until January 5. Tickets: 0870 607 7484 or www.newtheatreoxford.org.uk