Terry Pratchett's novels are so overwhelmingly popular that it is surprising no one has attempted to stage them before. But trying to make concrete sense of the Byzantine space epics spinning round the author's head isn't easy, so it's not surprising that most earth bound theatre-makers simply give up and go home.
In a spirit of adventure, Harrogate Theatre has opted for the technological route. The usual problem with multimedia theatre - frequently a great idea on paper and a terrible one on stage - is that dwarfing the action with enormous video screens makes the actors look about four inches tall. But here this is fine, because the heroes of Pratchett's story are all knee-high to a thimble.
The Truckers are a little tribe of techno-Borrowers who exist beneath the floor of a department store. With the end of the world imminent - or, at least, the closing down sale determining that everything must go - the little people have to escape to a new life where everything may not be under one roof.
To effect their exodus, they hijack a lorry and appoint a steering committee to keep it pointing in the right direction. Hence a whole team of space-age leprechauns, aided by a system of ropes and pulleys, discover how to switch lanes without warning, race other haulage firms and make rude gestures at passing motorists.
In order to transfer any of this to the stage you need either a capacious imagination or a dependable film-maker. Rob Swain's production has the latter, and Gary Tanner's video features some memorable flea's-eye footage, including a vertiginous ride up a monstrous moving staircase. Ultimately what children respond to in the theatre, however, is not well-meaning attempts to keep up with the digital world but brilliant, simple ideas, as a visit to Alan Ayckbourn's superb sci-fi epics in Scarborough proves. Here the younger members of the audience sat disdainfully through dialogue that seemed pitched below their level of intellect and video stuff that is hardly a patch on the PlayStation.
· Until March 30. Box office: 01423 502116. Then tours to Coventry and Bury St Edmunds.
