This ‘Velveteen Rabbit’ has tricks up its sleeve

Margery Williams’ poignant children’s classic, “The Velveteen Rabbit,” comes to the stage this week in a blend of music, masked actors, mime, colorful stage magic and larger-than-life puppets from the Enchantment Theatre Company of Philadelphia.

How much larger than life? Nana the nurse is a 10-foot-tall body puppet.

“That’s a real hit in the show,” says director-choreographer Leslie Reidel.

Because the actors are adults, “the idea was to have Nana be quite oversize to work with the Boy and the Rabbit,” explains Jennifer Blatchley Smith, who helped adapt the book for the stage. With the exception of some pirates -- part of a pop-up book-style fantasy sequence -- adult characters are shown only as shadows.

The nationally touring production will be at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach at 2 and 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Presented in association with New York-based Healy Entertainment, this musical about a toy rabbit brought to life through the love of a child features as its score the 2007 Grammy-nominated best children’s musical album, “The Velveteen Rabbit -- Love Can Make You Real,” by composer Don Sebesky and lyricist Gloria Nissenson.

Told through the 25-year-old company’s layered, signature style -- fairy-tale theater with flavors of European tradition and Asian bunraku -- it was created around Sebesky and Nissenson’s songs in an adaptation by Blatchley Smith, Reidel and Landis Smith, with additional music by Charles Gilbert.

Among the production’s other striking offerings: vivid lighting, dream sequences, a magical fairy, a wild thunderstorm and the soulful toy Skin Horse.

-- Lynne Heffley