"One of the things we really relish is the impossible," says Nikki Sved, "and that's why staging this book has been such a pleasure. When you read it you think, 'Goodness me, how are they ever going to do that in the theatre?'"

Following the West End success of Where The Whales Came, Theatre Alibi's latest show is based on the best-selling book by Dick King-Smith, author of The Sheep Pig and The Queen's Nose, which won the prestigious Smarties Prize when first published.

Equally exciting and moving, it is the tale of "Spider" Sparrow, abandoned as a baby in a lambing pen with a note pinned to his shawl reading "Please Save This Lamb".

As Spider grows up, everyone can see he's not like other children - for one thing, he has an amazing way with animals. He tames foxes, scares crows away from the fields and even tames a wild bucking bronco. But life can be tough for Spider, and danger is always just around the corner.

"When the man who adapted it, Dan Jamieson, first read it, he sat in the library and cried," says Sved, Theatre Alibi's artistic director. "He has worked with us for about 20 years and he recognised in Crowstarver the things we do well.

"We're good at dealing with emotion and this is absolutely bursting with it.

It's about the natural world and the cycle of life and death, so it inevitably tackles quite dark things but absolutely in a protective way. And it's warm and funny too."

With a score performed live on violin and piano, Theatre Alibi combines beautiful puppets with the skills of the five-strong cast to populate the Forties farmyard with Spider's animal friends - and foes.

"Our shows tend to start with actors being storytellers addressing an audience," explains Sved. "Once you come clean with an audience and say, 'Yes, this is a piece of theatre', then suddenly huge possibilities open up to you. You can do anything once you come clean even become a Bucking Bronco."

For Sved, the real pleasure with this production is the broad range of people it's attracting. "When you look across the auditorium," she says, "you see rows and rows of open mouths, all different sizes."

But what she has enjoyed most about working on Crowstarver was visiting its author at his house, where she spotted a little statue of Babe in the garden.

"Dick King-Smith says this is one of his favourites," she says, "and I can see why. It's very autobiographical, based on a farm he worked on when he first left school. But there's something so utterly contemporary, or truly universal, about the child at the centre of the story. The way he writes is so gentle yet completely unpatronising."

Starts at 7pm, Sat mat at 2pm. Call 01273 685861