AFTER the Lord Mayor’s show of The Railway Children, here comes… another lord mayor’s show from artistic director Damian Cruden and writer Mike Kenny.

If you can’t find a site-specific space to follow up the National Railway Museum in 2008 and 2009 – an open-air production in Rowntree Park was considered, but ruled out – why not transform the Theatre Royal into a different, but still recognisable, theatre?

From picnics and boats called Kenneth and Grahame on the terracing, to the 1960s’ concrete foyer being turned into a Toad Hall outbuilding with the “mushrooms” covered in greenery, The Wind In The Willows mirrors the family-friendly complete experience patented by The Railway Children. Designers Catherine Chapman and Lydia Denno have taken over the whole building and nature is running wild.

Enter the stalls and… stop! The stalls seating has gone. In its place is the temporary stage, which now stretches from where the lip of the usual stage would be, up to the dress circle, now renamed the Circle Rank, with a row of seating on the new perimeter.

Where the actors normally tread the boards are banks of seating, and the overall effect is of a theatre in the round with a capacity of 500.

The designers have built Toad Hall up the walls of the auditorium, but Toad Hall has seen better days; the old place is run down and for sale by Wild Wood Properties, five years after Mr Toad moved out, as Michael Lambourne’s splendidly Victorian whiskered Chief Weasel explains.

And so, as with his Railway Children, Mike Kenny has created a memory play for Ratty (Jonathan Race), Mole (Robert Pickavance), Mrs Badger (Sarah Parks) and the irrepressible Mr Toad (Martin Barrass), as the characters create props from whatever is lying around on the stage, to the accompaniment of a band of folk-musician animals from the Wild Wood.

Green light protrudes through the slats of a dilapidated wall to suggest the wood; a circular fountain becomes Ratty’s boat with the aid of a rotating plank and a cricket bat for a paddle, and it spouts water too. Each of Toad’s latest fads, from boats to a gispy caravan to a car, is conjured before our eyes, the motor being a sofa. For a snowstorm, the front row is asked to hold cotton sheets that spread magically around the set.

Wonderful costumes that still allow for maximum facial expression underpin the performances, which grew noticeably more human in the second half.

This may be a family show, but the dramatic style brings to mind a Brecht and Weill operatic drama, and the show is not without its politics. Kenny has veered away from presenting Grahame’s story as a clash between upper-class twits messing about on the river and feeling sacred when meeting oiks in a wood, instead creating a clash between wise, never-ending nature and man’s follies (the wind in the willows of the title), as represented by Mr Toad’s materialism and loadsamoney ways.

Sage Mrs Badger is given a long soliloquy on this subject and at one point Ratty and Mole sit silently contemplating nature (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn), and young children may be taxed by a theme that is laid on a little heavily, right down to the closing song.

It is a bold decision, one that leaves the first half a little slow too, and it is significant that afterwards a five-year-old picked out Barrass’s Mr Toad as his favourite character, no doubt because he made him laugh with his pantomime flourishes.

Nevertheless, Cruden and co-director Katie Posner and composer Christopher Madin have created an unforgettable theatrical experience, and there are sure to be further Theatre Royal shows staged this way.

The Wind In The Willows runs at York Theatre Royal, until August 21. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk