Rainbow

Join Grace on her journey to the other side of the rainbow as she learns to look below surfaces and to make important choices. In this whimsical and wayward tale we explore the way appearances deceive, the energies of the living world, discover new feelings of wonder and how selfless love can make lasting changes.

An adaptation in narrative verse of a children’s fantasy tale, ‘The Other Side of the Rainbow’ (1910) by Florence Bone (1875–1971), ‘Rainbow’ presents a series of magical adventures that lead the heroine and us to a greater sense of wonder about the living world.

To increase her sense of wonder Grace is chosen by Nature’s spirit guides and guardians to travel on ‘a funny sometimes fearful journey’. Her unlikely allies are small, often overlooked plants, flowers and insects. She seems to be about to discover what lies in and beyond the rainbow, but her decision to help a lost, bitter boy – Downcast Don – to rediscover ‘wonder’ diverts her through colourful and disturbing forests, down a well to find an underground forge, and into a meeting with an ancient desert giantess. Her chief guide, Heartsease, assures her this is all part of a search for rainbow wisdom, to see how all things and people matter.

Allowed then to climb the ‘Shining Stairway’, Grace is nearer the rainbow but in more danger of being sidetracked by strange, even dangerous forces. The promised places are beautiful and intriguing but she learns to look back below the surface of her adventures and to make important choices. Suddenly back in the everyday world she is still herself but more so because she can see and understand more acutely.