A proper plethora of good things this week, all in. Rounded off with The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain at the Traverse this afternoon.

I feel I've been overdosing on superlatives here a little bit recently but it has less to do with the impending season of goodwill and more to do with the fact that I've been theatrically very spoilt.

The point anyway is that Chris Hannan's swashbuckling tale is a complete treat. He's concocted a new story for the Musketeers based faithfully on the characters outlined in Dumas' books but speculating about what might befall the fellows in their later years.

Porthos continues to eat, sacrificing all for another morsel of cake. Athos is a dishevelled Lennon-lookalike who spends his time in hot pursuit of the hard stuff. And Aramis is a sultry ladies man seeking a kind of solace in the church. D'Artagnan, bemused by this lasciviousness, is a boy who's temporarily forgotten what's most important in life. But rediscovers it with the help of the Princess of Spain and his childhood friend, the fittingly named Constance.

The production looks gorgeous. Draped in coloured lights with a beautifully inventive set, it zips from scene to scene with enough sword fights to keep even the most restless of boy children spell-bound. And they were spell-bound, judging from today's audience's youthful contingent. The script is lovely. Perfectly balanced between a child friendly plot and an adult hunger for wickedness. And there are some cracking performances. Constance is feisty and forlorn, all at the same time. Porthos is fey, fat but ultimately fearless. I of course lost my heart to ladies man, Aramis (interestingly, last seen by me in An Argument About Sex earlier this year which I very much disliked. He looked to be having infinitely more fun this time around). But actually, singling out individuals is wrong because this is an ensemble piece with actors doubling as musicians, puppeteers (lovely skeletal bird!) and general (superbly efficient) scene shifters. Hats off to them for their all-round vigour, verve and energy. It was brilliant.

Hot on the heels of a week in London (of which maybe a little more later) and at least a couple of astonishingly expensive productions, I feel incredibly proud of Scottish theatre. This is a co-production with English Touring Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry so the Scots can't take all the credit. But with, no doubt, a fraction of the budget of a lot of their London compatriots, this lot have served up a show that has music, magic and mayhem in spadefuls.

Stuart Kelly, Mr Literary Editor of Scotland on Sunday, has written a programme note about Alexandre Dumas and rounds it off with a quote from him:

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

The show's on til Christmas Eve. You'll have sensed by now that I think it's worth a look.