BIRMINGHAM Theatre Company’s reputation for staging beautifully crafted shows for children continues with this new production of Tom’s Midnight Garden.

Like Philippa Pearce’s story, first published in 1958, David Wood’s adaptation has itself become something of a classic. This production, directed by Neil Foster, combines a sense of wonderment with characters rooted in naturalistic performances.

Quarantined with an aunt and uncle in their flat because of his brother’s measles, Tom one night hears the clock in the hall strike 13, goes to investigate, opens an adjacent door, and finds it opening on to a garden that is not really there. Or is it?

David Tute, as Tom, switches from bored disgruntlement to wide-eyed wonder as he steps from the 20th century to the Victorian era and meets the vivacious, but sadly oppressed orphaned child Hatty, played with exuberance and charm by Caitlin Thorburn.

Their repeated encounters, with Tom stepping forwards and back from his life to hers, last minutes for him, but cover weeks, months and years for Hatty as time compresses.

Beneath the innocence lie subtexts of loneliness and loss, friendship and fellow feeling, with Hatty forced to endure cruel taunts from boy cousins and her aunt’s cold charity.

Fearsome as the stern-voiced and sour-faced Aunt Grace, Helen Ryan is all loving warmth as the ageing Mrs Bartholomew, whose identity finally reveals that different times sometimes interact.

Some of the nine-strong cast play instruments on stage enhancing the action and serve as off-stage chorus compelling Tom forth.

The staging is impressive. Props are minimal and much of action is mimed, requiring audience imagination, but walls that look solid dissolve for vistas of garden and childhood freedom through the effective use of lighting, while skating scene in falling snow and with choreographed movement is close to magic.