The Storytellers Theatre Company has a really beautiful production for children in The Star Child and Other Stories, based on three tales by Oscar Wilde. Adaptor Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy has not only delicately lifted the master's stories from the page, but has supplied an imaginative context - a number of animals, freezing in the woods in a bitter winter, and seek distraction in the magic of words.
One is immediately conscious of the creativity invested in costumes, masks and stage settings, if only as a matter of eye-beguilement. When the actors/animals begin their narratives, the whole becomes more, a captivating trio of morality tales that seize the imagination and play on the emotions. Even adults will not be immune from the spells they cast.
The Star Child tells of a baby who falls from the heavens, and is adopted by a poor family. He grows up, arrogant in his beauty and contemptuous of life's unfortunates, only to be humbled and then redeemed through repentance and love.
In The Happy Prince a statue of a dead prince looks down on his city and sees its poverty. With the help of a swallow, he bestows his statue-parts on the poor and, with his faithful bird, dies; but paradise awaits their selflessness.
Finally, The Selfish Giant has a near-ogre expel children from his beautiful garden, which then becomes mired in perpetual winter. An act of kindness brings a new spring, and the aged giant finds his happiness at the point of death.
Bairbre Ni Chaoimh directs with the kind of uncondescending empathy that involves the audiences totally, and her cast - Nicole Rourke, Fergal McElherron, Arthur Riordan, Sarah Jane Drummey, Brendan McDonald, Jasmine Russell and Gerard Walsh - are sad and funny, lively and subdued, exactly as required.
Between now and December the show will be on a national tour, and will return to Dublin's Draiocht Theatre as its Christmas show. It is unlikely that there will be a better one around.