There is, to the best of my knowledge, no section within the Spotlight casting directory for performers less than six inches tall; which means that a theatrical version of Mary Norton’s tale must show considerable ingenuity to create the illusion that the characters are knee-high to a grasshopper. In fact, Theresa Heskins’s production of her own new adaptation is so convincingly to scale it includes a chirruping cricket kept as a pet, which clarifies that grasshoppers are actually about knee-high to a Borrower.

But aside from the tremendous fun to be had with outsize props and puppets, there’s a palpable sense of danger. The Borrowers are, after all, a benign, endangered race forced to flee whenever their existence is discovered. Heskins makes the intriguing point in her programme note that the story of the fugitive teenager Arrietty and her family was first published in the same year as the English translation of the diary of Anne Frank – a coincidence perhaps, though hardly unrelated to the climate of the times.

Indeed the conclusion of the first book – in which the tiny folk are forced from their home by a rat-catcher – is so bleak Heskins does well to continue the story by incorporating episodes from the two sequels, in which the Borrowers appear both afield and afloat. It also permits the introduction of the strange, feral Borrower known as Dreadful Spiller who teaches the family – now living in an abandoned boot – the survival skills necessary for life in the wild. There’s a breathtaking display of aerial skills in which Vanessa Schofield’s winningly resourceful Arrietty pursues Michael Hugo’s charismatic Spiller to the top of a hedgerow represented by a swath of green rigging. Whatever size one is meant to be, it’s a very long way down without the reassurance of a safety net, or even a handy spider’s web, to break the fall.

• Until 31 January. Box office: 01782 717962. Venue: New Vic theatre