Nobody weaves a spell of magic in Milwaukee theater quite like First Stage, a company designed for children but that tells universal stories as meaningful for an old man as they are for a young girl.

They’ve done it again with "The Snow," a world premiere by Finegan Kruckemeyer, commissioned and developed by First Stage, Oregon Children’s Theatre and Magik Theatre.

The secret to the success of First Stage is plain for almost anyone to see. It is always – always –the story. There may be music or laughs or tears or high drama or tension or deep and thoughtful morals. But at First Stage, it always gets back to the story.

"The Snow," directed by Jeff Frank, is a delightful story of a child who shows the world of adults that heroes come in all shapes, sizes and ages.

The village of Kishka awakens one winter morning to find a snow unlike any they had seen before. It is so high that nobody in the village can climb to get out, and all of the fields where they grew their food wound up covered. 

With disaster seemingly at hand, the adults, as adults seem to always do, cried, as the narrator said, "Something needed to be done." But, as so often happens when adults talk about stuff, nothing happened. The people of Kishka were cold. They were hungry. They couldn’t build fires.

So, they convened a "Doing-Something Council." They had subcommittees, and they had facilitators. But soon, after all the talk, as adults sometimes do, they realized that while they had some ideas, as one narrator said, "No one actually knew what to do."

Along comes a child of the village, Theodore (Seth Hoffman in the cast I saw). "I do," he told the adults who were wondering how to find their way out of this pickle.

"It was odd because he had been elected onto none of the centralized convening bodies at all, and he was a child," said a narrator.

Odd it may well have been, but Theodore figures a way to escape from the desolate land into which the village of Kishka had been frozen: a catapult. A big catapult. A big catapult that will throw Theodore and the giant Oliver (Tim Linn), along with six others from the village, over the snowbank and on the path to rescue.

Even the plans of children sometimes go awry though, and in this one, the only two to survive the launch, flight and landing, were Theodore and Oliver, who never spoke.

And the adventure takes off as they struggle through forests filled with frightening birds and darkness filled with horror and a variety of other obstacles.

With inventive design by Sarah Hunt-Frank (scenic), Nick Belley (lighting) and Matt Whitmore (sound), we are carried along on the adventure to home.

The young Mr. Hoffman is a delight, with a smart and deadpan sense of humor that had the audience chuckling throughout. Linn, perched on stilts, was a powerful and stabilizing presence through the trip to home.

And First Stage continued it’s wonderful and intelligent vision that brings families together in live theater. The old giant and the young boy did prove something, as Theodore said at the end of the play when asked how such a wondrous trip met with such success.

"Well maybe that’s because the two can go together.," he said. "Often it’s the most regular people who manage to do the most extraordinary things."

"The Snow" runs through March 20 and information on tickets and showtimes is available here.

Production Credits: Director, Jeff Frank; Assistant Director, Katie Cummings; Music Director, Andrew Crowe; Scenic Designer Sarah Hunt-Frank; Lighting Designer, Nick Belley; Costume Designer, Kim Instenes; Sound Designer, Matt Whitmore; Movement Director, Matt Daniels; Stage Manager, Daniel Hanson; Assistant Stage Manager, Julia Xiong.