Just in time for Family Day, World Stage kicked off with, Everything Under the Moon, a collaboration between Toronto visual artist Shary Boyle and Winnipeg composer Christine Fellows.

You know a show has hit the mark with children when they are absolutely quiet, and both the younger and older members of the sold-out audience sat in rapt attention. On the other hand, the little girl behind me asked her father: “What are they flying off to find?” In other words, Everything Under the Moon has a lot to recommend it, but there are also problems in clarity.

Told through song and shadow puppets, the story is about Idared, a honeybee, and Limbertwig, a little brown bat, and their joint quest for a way to save their species. (The story is ripped right out of environmental headlines. Apparently both honeybees and brown bats have been disappearing since 2006.) Unfortunately, because the ideas are expressed in song, the message of the plot is muddy. I didn’t have problems following the stages of the quest, but I did have trouble as to the why of it. There has to be an introduction of some sort to state the case, as it were.

Fellows’ music is charming and gentle, with beautiful harmony. The composer (keyboard, ukulele) did most of the singing, supported by Alex McMaster (cello, vocals, clarinet, trumpet, keyboards) and Ed Reifel (percussion, vocals). Fellows does not have the best voice in the world, but it is pleasant and heartfelt nonetheless.

Boyle’s images are a delight, whimsical and humorous by turn. They employ all manner of shadow puppetry –stick, projected images and human body etc. – against a riot of colour. This variety lets the imagination fly, and the characters that the honeybee and bat meet on their quest, including a chain-smoking Inuit trapper, a woolly mammoth, and an ancient Inca sacrificial child, are never clones. Each has its own look. However, the performers (including Boyle’s two assistants, Emma Letki and Amy Siegel) were decked out in some kind of indeterminate creature costume by Heather Goodchild that had no definition.

Alas, there was no director, and the performance could have used an outside eye to help with comings and goings. Fellows, for example, would disappear behind a monitor from time to time. We heard her voice, but didn’t see her, which made no sense at all.

There is certainly a show in Everything Under the Moon. It just needs refinement. It is clear, however, that the children were entranced by the visual images, and lulled by the pretty music.

Everything Under the Moon, created and performed by Shary Boyle and Christine Fellows, Harbourfront Centre World Stage, Enwave Theatre, Feb. 18 to 23, 2012.