“My name is Hetty Feather. Don’t mock.” So quips the small but fiery protagonist at the opening of Jacqueline Wilson’s popular tale, adapted for the stage by the Rose Theatre Kingston. The legion of fans in the audience were, to my eyes, equally formidable: a sea of little girls who gasped and shook at every plot twist, some clutching their copy of the book – although one of them later informed me that she didn’t cry once.

The play is essentially aimed at children and so must be assessed on their terms – Phoebe Thomas (nominated for a BAFTA when she herself was only eight) brings tiny Hetty to life brilliantly, cavorting around stage with tumbling red hair and a permanent grin. It is not unusual for Jacqueline Wilson’s stories to deal with abandonment or abuse, approaching the impact they have on children with honesty and simplicity. In this, Wilson's first plunge into the past, the social ills of a much harsher time-period are explored. The production traces the story of a baby girl given to the Foundling Hospital, a strict institution founded in the early eighteenth century as the first ever home for abandoned children.

The simplicity of childish emotions speaks for itself throughout, set to the gypsy tones of an old folk song, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’. The strongest emotion evoked is that of loss – the children were sent to foster homes for the first six years of their lives before being legally reclaimed by the hospital, forced to endure what was in effect a second abandonment. One scene, in which Hetty is inspected before entering the hospital, captures the intensity of childish fears and incomprehension particularly well, the whole stage plunged into loud and methodical forced scrubbing and hair chopping.

The use of adults to play children and even babies, so often an awkward endeavour, is pulled off remarkably well. Pleasantly whimsical plot devices aid the imagination – when Hetty Feather contemptuously describes her name, she is actually assailed all round by tickling feathers.

Soft velvet hangings, ladders and trapeze rings dominate the Cambridge Arts Theatre's stage, serving as a wonderfully intricate environment in which Hetty and her siblings let their creativity loose – climbing trees, hiding from adults, and escaping the sterile, sedentary world of the hospital. In fact, physical movement is where the West End cast members really prove themselves, particularly Matt Costain (one of the main performers in the Olympic opening ceremony), whose monkey-like agility effortlessly evokes the spontaneity of a child at play - but with the technical ability and poise of a full-time adult. Indeed, the staging turns each carefully choreographed scene into a veritable feat of engineering, the precision of which is echoed in the delicately hand painted costumes.

The show provides total immersion into both Victorian London and the sensory world of childhood, achieving a delicate balance between the harsh realities of the former and the hopefulness of the latter.