Review: Me And My Girl, Pick Me Up Theatre, Grand Opera House, York, until tomorrow; box office, 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york. Sonnet Walks, York Shakespeare Project, until tomorrow; 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

CONTRASTING walks are on offer in another typically busy week of theatre in York, one on stage, the other involving stretching your legs.

At the Grand Opera House, Robert Readman's Pick Me Up Theatre company are in dazzling form in Stephen Fry's 1987 upgrade of Wakefield composer Noel Gay's Me And My Girl.Gay's music, full of perky brass and a spring in its step under Sam Johnson's musical direction, is matched to L Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber's lyrics and book, revised so humorously and astutely by Fry.

Me And My Girl, a not-too-distant cousin of My Fair Lady in tone, revolves around Lambeth lad Bill Snibson (Finn East) being the suddenly discovered heir to a stuffy earldom but doing anything to keep his gal, Sally Smith (Emily Chattle).

East is York's blossoming lead talent of the moment, bursting with charm, humour, light feet; Chattle is a Cockney joy too, and all around them Pick Me Up are having a ball, Lambeth Walk and all.

From the pearly Lambeth Walk to the latest batch of York Shakespeare Project Sonnet Walks, this time devised by Mick Taylor for the 2019 York International Shakespeare Festival, under the title of The Wedding. Gathering on the Theatre Royal terrace for an hour's perambulation around York landmarks, walkers are guided by the Mother of the Bride (Emily Knight/Shirley Williams) through encounters with the bride, groom, family members, welcome or unwelcome, and the vicar on the eve of the wedding day, each encounter flowing from often agitated conversation into a soothing sonnet.

New YSP sonneteers Wilma Edwards, Sindy Allen, Sue Harris and Harry Revell join regular participants Nigel Evans, Frank Brogan, Di Starr and Helen Wilson, and what can be more lovely than a marriage of Shakespeare's golden verse and York's heritage, all with a happy ending, definitely for the better, not worse!

Charles Hutchinson