Go figure: this collaborative children's project about famine, myth and memory is one of the most ambitious and complex productions to hit a Dublin stage since God knows when - and it stars a coachload of prepubescent kids up from Waterford for the week.

Fair dues to Little Red Kettle and writer-directors Liam Meagher and Ben Hennessy. Not only have they respected and brought the best out of 30-odd child performers, managing them across a necessarily large, sand-covered stage, they know their young audiences, too.

While this dad took somewhat cynical notes on the first act, my six- and nine-year-old companions were absorbed in the play's issues, its enfolding layers of history, its constant time shifts.

After two hours and an interval, the absorption was general. Sure, the set-up is predictable. When my elder daughter knew nothing about the show except its name, she said: "I think it'll be about a bunch of modern-day kids on a trip, and they'll come to sort of a Celtic magic place and they'll learn all about its story."

Bingo. But the story is subtle and poignant, cleverly linking the Famine period to the present day by theme, genealogy and even sly visual cues: one kid of 2001 wears a US-flag bandana, another a Madonna T-shirt. One of the lessons learned by audience and characters alike is that the Famine wasn't really so long ago in the great scheme of things; the extended Diarmuid and Grβinne mythic material is supposed to underline that, but mainly it adds theatricality.

If all The Grβinne Stone managed to do was present real kids playing real kids, it would still be worthwhile. It achieves far more than that, though: my kids came out with a sense that they are linked to a dramatic oral tradition about the Famine.