The legendary director and producer Hal Prince once told me, “I think it’s very important in the development of an art form to revisit highlights in its history. Watershed productions encourage us to aspire to watershed productions.”

The Little Prince does just that. The brainchild of choreographer and director Anne Tournié, associate director Chris Mouron, and composer Terry Truck, it is a work so ingenious in its conception and seemingly effortless in execution, that one could be forgiven for underestimating their incredible achievement.

The Little Prince. Photograph © Philippe Hanula

There is no mistaking Tournié’s pedigree. The experience she gained during her years working alongside Franco Dragone of Cirque du Soleil fame is clearly on display. However, together with her co-creators, she expands on that vocabulary, cherry-picking throughout the history of theatre to create a work that both celebrates its greatest milestones and lays a path for the future of storytelling. Some may choose to describe this approach as derivative, but that is to miss the point. In honouring the past, the creators of The Little Prince have themselves become innovators and the result is an apotheosis of everything that came before it.

As the...