They are called Bonecruncher, Childchewer, Gizzardgulper and Bloodbottler. And the giants of Roald Dahl’s The BFG certainly live up to these names. In one startlingly graphic scene in David Wood’s stage version of the tale they are seen pulling doll ‘children’ limb from limb and ramming bits of them in their slavering maws.

Gruesome stuff – but just, we are assured, what children like. Ditto the earlier orgy of wind-breaking – sorry, ‘whizzpoppering’ – indulged in by Anthony Pedley’s BFG (that’s Big Friendly Giant, in case anyone needs to be told) and his ‘human bean’ friend Sophie (Becky John). For my part, I merely thought it gross and bad-mannered.

Which only goes to show, some will say, that I should lighten up, and get on the wavelength of those at whom this entertainment is aimed.

It is actually a moot point, in fact, whether children do like to be terrified or invited to join in a celebration of vulgarity. Those all around me in the Playhouse stalls on Tuesday night, for instance – while clearly gripped by the tale – showed few signs of gleeful boisterousness in their enjoyment.

As an inventive piece of theatre, this new production from Northampton’s Royal and Derngate and Fiery Light has a great deal to commend it, not least the use of on-stage music (composer Paula Gardiner) supplied by the cast. There is ingenuity, too, in the way director Phil Clark and designer Sean Crowley find means to present the disparity in size between giants and human beans.

For much of the first part of the story, this is achieved by means of a puppet Sophie (brilliantly manipulated by the life-size one) who is plucked from a dolls’ house home and taken off to the land of the giants.

This, incidentally, is a scene reminiscent of Peter Pan. Just as other episodes put one in mind of Gulliver’s Travels and the mangling of the language to produce giant-speak recalls the work of Lewis Carroll and, indeed, Stanley Unwin.

In the later scenes at Buckingham Palace, where Heather Phoenix supplies a hilarious turn as Her Maj, we see the BFG in all his towering glory as operations are planned to end the flesh-eating giants’ attacks on the youth of Britain. I was amused to note that the focus of these was said to be our great public schools. Perhaps another reason not to go private . . .

Until Saturday. For tickets call 01856 305305 (online at oxfordplayhouse.com).