Roald Dahl classic is wonderfully adapted

I wish I were six again – well, maybe only for the purposes of enjoying this magical, dynamic, inventive and totally riveting production of James and the Giant Peach. Forget ‘suspension of disbelief’– it just IS magic.

Tom Gillies plays James, whose parents die in a freak accident with an escaped Rhinoceros and he is sent to cruel aunts, Sponge (Claire Greenway) and Spiker(Giovanna Ryan). A man, actually a puppet, appears with some magic beans that make enormous things happen. James loses them but the garden fauna – a worm (Rhys Saunders), a spider (Sioned Saunders), a ladybird (Claire Greenway), a centipede (Chris Lindon) and a grasshopper (Iwan Tudor) eat them. And one lands in the sterile peach tree. Aunts Spiker and Sponge charge exorbitant fees for people to see the giant peach.

The section with Brian (Oliver Lynes) and camera operator (Giovanna Ryan) from the BBC is pure genius – and there are many such touches. James lives in the peach with the enormous insects, all versatile musicians, until it breaks lose from its moorings and heads across the Atlantic for New York to land on the spike of the Empire State Building.

What I loved about this production was the transparency of the magic. I wondered how the peach was going to grow – but that was tackled really simply and cleverly. This is a wonderful production for all the family.

Jane Howard