The Connaught’s new children’s programme has been largely sold out over the past few months, but Sunday’s The Tin Soldier wasn’t. An inexplicable turn of events, since Storybox Theatre’s telling of the Hans Christian Anderson tale was the stand-out performance of an altogether excellent series of plays.

The Tin Soldier may not be as well-loved as some of the other children’s literary canon but in the right hands it is truly magical, and internationally-renowned puppeteer Rod Burnett has some of the safest hands around. Using a few simple props – wind-up toys, a couple of drums and, of course, the tin soldier himself – Burnett is able to weave an intricate, compelling and irresistible tale.

Importantly, Burnett knows a little secret that many children’s entertainers fail to realise: that children are very much like all other people – they don’t like to be patronised, and they have an innate love of stories that typically doesn’t include the all-singing, all-dancing faux-wackiness of many children’s entertainers.

Instead, Burnett simply told the story, one person to another, and in doing so managed to approach some of life’s most troubling issues: love, the loss of childhood, death, and took the whole audience, children and all, along with him.