Coram Boy, NT Olivier, London

Roll up! Child killers, passion and pain!

Centre stage is a simple wooden platform encircled by tall poles. With effortless fluidity, this setting can be a church nave with organ loft, or a forest surrounding a mansion, or a London wharf bristling with masts. This is as we follow the chorister-hero and budding composer, Alexander Ashbrook, and then the next generation of his family and friends: all growing up with loving nurture but encountering rending cruelty as well.

Towards the end of the story there is a near-melodramatic flurry of plot twists that could quite easily turn into an Andrew Lloyd-Webber-style musical. Also, there are a few purple patches in the dialogue and some ingredients feel derivative, with notably Dickensian elements and more than a trace of Quasimodo about the drooling simpleton, Jack Tarlton's Meshak.

Yet Edmundson and almost all Still's cast manage to make the complex storylines and urgent acceleration both lucid and thrilling. Romantic attachments, passions and pain are acted with a sensitivity and a heartfelt directness that make them acutely touching.

Indeed, after its subdued start, this production becomes enthralling, making you care about or fear Gavin's characters with a remarkable intensity. Alexander, as a boy, is beautifully played by Anna Madeley with a prim dignity and delicately humorous touches. Justine Mitchell's Melissa has lovely tenderness combined with an independent spirit, and Paul Ritter is truly chilling and creepy as the child-trading Otis Gardiner.

This show is not for the easily upset. Grim occurrences include death by hanging and ghostly, wailing puppet babies buried in the woods. However, the final progression towards long-lost parents regained - after rebellious and redemptive actions - is exquisitely uplifting, with interwoven music from Handel's Messiah performed with an onstage choir and chamber orchestra. The Christian content, rather cleverly, provides an antidote to Howard Brenton's polemical play Paul (in the Cottesloe), while the climatic ecclesiastical chorusing of "His mother is light" turns into an overwhelming celebration of maternal love here on earth.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

To 4 Feburary, 020 7452 3000