Go see good youth theatre if you no longer believe in the adult offerings.

We have a huge need for magic and a miracle in our time. Some people think you lose that when you grow up and/or have children, but nothing could be further from the truth, of course. And in case you had any doubts, I would wish for more adult theatre makers to revisit the magic you were still open to in childhood.

So have a go at good youth theatre if you think theatre full of adults contains too many ego documents or philosophy of life born out of depression.

Squat

I was in the happy circumstance of experiencing it again with the NUT on Thursday 6 April, during a performance at the Willibrordschool in Vleuten. A room full of four- and five-year-olds of every colour imaginable and two actors who know perfectly how to do that: magic with almost nothing. Yara Piekema and Roan Ten Cate show how you don't have to squat to effortlessly bridge an age gap of decades.

King Bling Bling is the name of the play, and everything, set, music and costumes, fits into the gold-painted second-hand middle-class car the company tours the country with. Floor Leene's text is, As we have come to expect from her, playful and so earthy and solid that it holds up well for mature audiences.

Greedy

Unfortunately, we elderly people are not part of the target audience right now. This play, about a girl who can't sleep the night before her birthday and secretly wants to unwrap her presents already, seems simple, but because the author throws in a whole story about King Midas right away, it doesn't bore for a moment.

We all recognise that lesson about greed. That mythical king, who made one wish too many a millennium or so back ('that everything I touch turns to gold'), holds up a golden mirror to the little girl with her greed.

Spandau Ballet

The audience effortlessly lives along thanks to the mature playing and goes into all the highs and lows. Simple songs (what student doesn't go loosely to that these days?), are interspersed with a beautiful translation of Spandau Ballet's quite complicated song 'Gold'. Time for the group teachers present to secretly freak out.

Call me simple, but it's performances like this that make me believe in the power of theatre again. After all, it is that art form where you can enter a world with a simple word: not because someone explains everything to you, but because you do it yourself.

That magic, that unique co-operation between audience and maker, is what I saw at work this rainy morning in Vleuten. It was a miracle.