The Tortoise and the Hare tells the well-know fairytale of a shiftless hare and a diligent but plodding tortoise, taking in various woodland animals (my daughter’s favourite was a butterfly - mine was a bee) who dance their help and hindrance to the two characters until the tortoise triumphs. There’s some physical comedy here (lots of the tortoise spinning on his shell) and some delightfully springy dancing from the hare, alongside a selection of nicely performed mini solos and duets from the whole cast.

My child and I were actually already familiar with all of this, because this is the same production of The Tortoise and the Hare that is available on CBeebies. The TV version has the addition of a narrator explaining the action, but it’s otherwise fairly similar from what I can remember. This is great if you’re attending with very young children, as a) they love repetition and b) if they’re familiar with the piece they will have a much clearer grasp of what’s going on and perhaps get a lot more out of it. This is also the joy of having such a well known story driving the performance - the children all knew the basic gist of what was going to happen and were free to focus on the music and dance.

In this way, the adaptation for children is clear, but in many ways, this is a completely serious ballet that takes its audience seriously. At the beginning a voiceover tells us to be quiet or we’ll upset the animals, and other than that the storytelling is entirely nonverbal. The orchestra and cast are small (4 and 6, respectively) but this is a real orchestra and real dancers performing a short but interesting piece with precision and verve. The dancers may be dressed as bunnies but they are taking their work and their audience seriously. I always think that children can really tell if they’re being respected as an audience; they can smell it a mile off when they’re being patronised, and there was none of that here.

All in all, this performance is a real delight. When the hare first sprung onto the stage, my daughter’s face absolutely lit up, and she was gripped throughout, whispering her disapproval of the hare’s behaviour and admiration of the costumes to me in scene changes. Afterwards, she dragged me to the orchestra pit to look at the musicians, because she just couldn’t believe there was live music being played. She’s been to the theatre before (lots! To review things with me!), but this had production values far in excess of the children’s shows we normally see. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to young families looking for an accessible yet excellent taste of ballet.