The Little Prince is playing at the Broadway Theater, ex-home of Miss Saigon, Les Misérables and Fiddler, but it just as well may be showing in Lincoln Center, or at a mega-resort on the Las Vegas strip. Anne Tournié’s touring production brings a uncommon genre to the Great White Way – a contemporary ballet meets circus spectacle – in the process translating one of the most iconic fantasy children stories ever written to the stage in a way that is both striking and genuine. After tour legs in Paris, Australia and Dubai, Broadway audiences can now be transported by this multi-sensory interpretation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic; from Peggy Housset’s dramatic outfits to Chris Mouron’s soulful melodies, the Lyra aerials to cut-out animations evoking both Dali and Terry Gilliam, The Little Prince successfully conjures up the magic of the French aristocrat’s 1943 novella.

It would be easy to equate this French show with a Cirque du Soleil spin-off, but to do so would be to misconstrue the production’s uniqueness; director/choreographer Tournié, alongside co-director/librettist Mouron and composer Terry Truck, construct a distinctly less assembly line-like piece than the myriad iterations we have come to expect annually from the French-Canadian juggernaut. The same elements which have endeared the original book to so many generations of kids and adults – the lyrical, almost metaphysical musings on childhood, loneliness, love, imagination and growing up – could have posed a formidable challenge to adapt to a live setting; instead, they are solved here by a single narrator, artful dance flows and an imaginative combination of stagecraft, lighting and video, resulting in a surreal story being given an apt, abstract treatment. If you are, as the show notes, “a serious man with no time for daydreaming,” perhaps this isn’t the show for you… for everyone else, this series of charming vignettes tied together with a distinct continental flavor is a sui generis night out at the theater.

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