Aerial feats, dance, a touch of Gaul—Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince at the Broadway Theater brings a beloved children’s classic to the stage with visual flair. Beginning as the book does with a crash landing in the desert, the show moves quickly from scene to scene as a boy in a yellow jumpsuit and yellow spiky hair from a nearby asteroid recounts his adventures to the downed aviator. Sort of a Candide meets Cirque de Soleil. 

One such encounter is with a beautiful rose (Laurisse Sulty), another with a wily fox (Dylan Barone), all of whom impart some wisdom to the boy (Lionel Zalachas). Chris Mouron, writer and co-director with the show’s choreographer Anne Tournie, does a fine job narrating these events. In green hair and tweetle-dum suit, she speaks with a heavy French accent, the story translated to English on both sides of the stage. My companion, 7-year-old Max Herman was grateful to be able to read her words, but was far more dazzled by a dancer with a toilet plunger, loving the spectacle—and proclaiming this part his favorite.

Love does conquer all, as the story ends. And then begins again: building to the aviator (Aurelien Bednarek) finally aloft in a ballet over the first few rows of the orchestra and the showering down of red paper hearts.

It was not until Mouron sings for real in the second act that for me a realization struck. Take this as the gripe of a jaded theater goer: How wonderful this show could be, accompanied by a live orchestra.