LIKE Stirling-based Wee Stories Theatre, Bristol's Storybox is anxious to reclaim the less saccharin originality of some of our best-loved tales from Disneyfication. While the former's Labyrinth ridiculed Hercules, Rod Burnett's telling of the Hans Christian Andersen's coming-of-age fable includes an epilogue that bluntly tells the audience that his sad ending is better than the video's happy one because his is true. Were the kids reduced to quivering wrecks of emotional insecurity by this revelation? Not that I noticed.

Burnett's Little Mermaid is a paragon of effective simplicity. A simple drum becomes the moon, a sword handle doubles as a boat, and clever lighting creates the character of the sea-witch, who has many of the best lines. ''The men up there don't like tails on their girlfriends,'' she warns our heroine. ''There are plenty more fish in the sea.''

The hag's character is the best manifestation of the transformation the story has undergone during the voyage from Copenhagen to Burnett's native Bristol. There is a practical seamanship about his craft which includes the audience's vocal involvement in the transformation of the mermaid into a two-legged creature, with the assistance of a screwdriver.

A beautiful thing she is, too, the show's sole puppet, but Burnett's hands are his primary mode of physical expression, becoming fireworks, birds, the mermaid's sisters and, finally, the little one's departing soul. It is a wonderfully intimate show that Burnett directs squarely at the tots in the front row, so that even the MacBob studio seems like a mighty big space.

n Part of the Puppet Animation Festival 2000. At Paisley Arts Centre today, performances at 11am and 1pm.