Kate Cross - Blog Space

The question of classification - The Little Prince Goes to Edinburgh

What does tamed mean? Inquires the Little Prince repeatedly until he receives his answer…

‘If you were to tame me’ says the fox,

And I were to tame you

2 would become 1

And 1 would become 2

You would be the only boy in the world for me

I would be the only fox in the world for you’.

One child from an audience of Toby Thompson’s adaptation of The LItte Prince, produced by The Egg in Bath and currently showing at The Pleasance, reflected on this by saying:

‘Now, I understand, “be tamed” is more of an unbreakable bond between two living beings.’

Children are experts in love, friendship and loss. It’s all in a day’s play for them and they have felt it all. Toby Thompson dares to ask big questions of children and their adults, and they prove to be more than capable of deep bouts of critical reflection, so long as you set the mood. But let me rewind.

We first encountered Toby Thompson when he was a teenager and already showing signs of distinction. A fish out of water in the strait-jacketed English schooling system, Toby spent all the time he could discovering his poetic and comic voice by talking to himself. Yes. Years spent as an only child, tramping the fields near Bath, speaking in different voices and making himself laugh. Or cry. Observing all that is puzzling and beautiful and ghastly to mortals on their earth-journey.

As a teenager he started to make waves as a performance poet or spoken word artist or whatever his unique style can be classified as…enough for both Lee Lyford, then Associate Director of The Egg, and Jesse Jones, then in-residence at Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton, to classify Toby as a ‘playwright’.

With Jesse, Toby made A Day To Remember and For The Record, where he assembled his now familiar theatrical ‘vanitas’, if you like: vinyls, a keyboard, the sense that, as Chris Wiegand from The Guardian observes, ‘we have rocked up at his home rather than the theatre’.

With Lee Lyford, The Egg commissioned Toby to adapt a fairy tale of his choosing into a theatre show for a young audience. By which we mean, children. It was a nervous hunch. Toby was a wordsmith. There would be many words. Children do have ‘100 languages’ (Loris Malaguzzi) - but words barely feature. Is this hubris?

When he arrived in The Egg offices clutching a volume of short stories by Herman Hesse, our ticket-selling hearts sank. ‘I want to adapt this one’ he said ‘it’s called Faldum’. Sigh. But how could we resist this tale of the sublime violinist and his friend, who are granted wishes, and bear witness to the passing of time and generations and who tussle at life’s big questions like what it means to be free.

The ‘ticket-selling’ wing of The Egg (!) requested a rebrand and I Wish I Was A Mountain (apologies Hesse) sprang to life under Lyford’s direction and with design by Anisha Fields.

Its triumphant arrival in the world awarded it excellent reviews, commissions, international tours – all the plaudits we could have wished for. It continues to bring reflection and joy to audiences young and old:

‘Mum, you never told me it was going to be this good’!

Here was proof if ever we needed it that CHILDREN ARE DEEP THINKERS AND FEELERS and that words can play a part in eliciting powerful responses.

As the world altered, and became threatening, theatre turned up the political dial and quite often, young audiences were not spared this manifestation. Rage, anger and righteousness seeped from the wings and The Egg, driven itself by a powerful sense of social justice, fancied taking a step back (or forward?)  into a place of curiosity, wonder, awe and metaphor. Such work might demand of its audience but could give back a longer lasting bounty. Perhaps the most political act we can perform is to invite our young and old audiences to imagine a world where we can love one another and love ourselves?

Hence, we, with Director Nik Partridge, invited Toby to create his second work for a young audience. We led him towards The Little Prince – it seemed fitting. We wanted to make a play true to the spirit of the original, not a space adventure, but a journey of searching, discovery and longing. Something with texture and confusion, sadness and madness. Something with no answers… And then take it to The Fringe! Which leads me to a classification question: what category are we in?

Children’s Shows? But the Little Prince isn’t a ‘show’. There are no bubbles, magic tricks, experiments and no death-defying acrobatics. If we position this piece under Children’s Shows, and attract just one of its target audiences, how will we manage their expectations, set the right mood?

Anger and rage at the state of the world are not in Toby’s performative lexicon so none of his work charades as an act of resistance. Yet he does resist. He resists the rage. And disquiet. He resists being partisan. He resists knowing. His resistance isn’t complacent. It is the greatest and most patient act of radical hope imaginable. An invitation to self-love and deeper connection. A plea for truth, without absolutes. This is why I love to watch Toby’s Little Prince. Each new sentence feels like a lifelong gift, a modern-day prayer even: put all the sentences together and you have an inheritance of compassionate possibility to bestow on your youngers.

The best work for young audiences I’ve witnessed over the years obliterates distinctions that exist between age groups and speaks universally to its audience:

2 become 1

1 becomes 2

And it seems to me that this audience, tamed and together, is witnessing quite the most breathtaking act of resistance one can imagine.

The Little Prince runs at The Pleasance Beyond at noon until 25^th August.

Kate Cross, August, 2025