Design at its most theatrical

“This is design at its most theatrical: Visuals that startle at first, then tickle as you figure out how they are pulled off and what everyday objects they are made of.

It goes well with the plot, which sees Bastian not only reading The Neverending Story, but seemingly sucked into it. Runeckles and Khan, who both give sweet performances, are styled similarly to suggest that Bastian is imagining himself as the hero Atreyu as he hides from his real-world challenges…

In recent years, both the Stratford Festival and Shaw Festival have been trying to capture the family market by staging well-known fantasy stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis, but this is the first production that I haven’t found a bit trying as an adult spectator.”