Performing Arts

You meet some fantastic creatures when you enter the world of Roald Dahl, whether it's the eccentric candy maker and oompa-loompas of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or a dream-catching giant who refuses to eat humans (or human beans as he calls them) in The BFG , also known as The Big Friendly Giant.

Mark Oristano

Kineta Willow Massey (left, as Spiker), Johnny Sequenzia (James) and Crystal M. Bratton (Sponge) appear in Dallas Children's Theater's James and the Giant Peach.

And then there's a peach that grows large enough for a boy and his insect friends to sail it across the Atlantic in James and the Giant Peach, now in an exuberant production at Dallas Children's Theater through April 22.

So how does a theater convey a growing peach on an ocean journey?

That's the kind of challenge that should give a sensible theater pause, which is probably one of the reasons you don't see James done terribly often. But the ingenious, true-to-the-book script helps. It's by David Wood, a British playwright and an old hand at adapting Dahl. And happily, the direction by Artie Olaisen channels the magic by keeping the emotions real amid the mad (and funny) excesses of Randel Wright's endlessly inventive sets: a back screen that an image of the peach swells to fill, a falling (peach) ball from the theater rafters, explosions of confetti into the audience and a fluorescent underwater scene as James dives in to save Centipede.

James (the appealing Johnny Sequenzia) tells his story as a flashback, recounting how he was orphaned and moved in with his nasty aunts: skinny Spiker and rotund Sponge (played with dark, comic relish by Kineta Willow Massey and Crystal M. Bratton, respectively).

Like a Cinderfella, James longs for escape. It comes in the form of a mysterious old man who offers him a bag of brewed crocodile tongues that turn out to be magical.

And this is the point where the fairy tale turns into an empowerment tale. James must decide if he dares to become a leader who will help his new, many-legged friends evade sharks and reach safe harbor.

While there are echoes of many older fairy tales (including Jack and the towering beanstalk that took him to another world), there is also a whiff of Christopher Robin in the way James bonds with his friends.

The terrific five-insect ensemble is colorful – literally and figuratively, thanks to Derek C. Whitener's clever costumes (love all those shoes pinned to the clothes of the multifooted Centipede, who is played with wide-eyed wonder by Forrest Foster). And Seth T. Magill one-ups Eeyore in ferreting out the darkest possible interpretation of every situation ("He's only happy when he's unhappy," says Phyllis Cicero's motherly Miss Spider).

Dahl has a dark, anti-authority sense of humor, and there are four deaths, two of them sad (James' parents), two not (the aunts). But we doubt kids will be troubled. This is, after all, a rattling good tale about a boy and bugs and dreams that come true, all wrapped up in a peach of a show.

Plan your life

Through April 22 at the Rosewood Center for Family Arts, 5938 Skillman north of Northwest Highway. $16, $14 children, students and seniors. 214-978-0110, www.dct.org.