During its creation throughout the late 1950s and at the turn of the 1960s, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes was a piecemeal work. Originally conceived of as a film project for Bradbury's friend Gene Kelly, its eventual unveiling as a novel in 1962 was as a work that fell somewhere between youthful fantasy and adult horror. Now acknowledged as a genre classic for masterfully blending the two fields, its transition to the stage here - courtesy of the National Theatre of Scotland and the Catherine Wheels Theatre Company, from Bradbury's own adaptation - draws attention to the delicately balanced dichotomy at the tale's heart.

That's not necessarily a positive, in the end, although there's much to be won over by throughout this story of two teenaged best friends in a small Midwestern, mid-20th century town fighting the influence of a sinister carnival. Gill Robertson has directed a visually delightful piece, which is contained on a circular stage surrounded by clapboard balconies and boltholes, around which the boyish leads Jim and Will climb and play.

Jennifer Paterson's cackling Dust Fairy is involved in the most impressive visual spectacle, as she bounds and floats around the set with eerie grace thanks to a counterweighted pulley system co-manned by a stunt performer. Projected backdrops, a video-enhanced hall of mirrors and a sinister, age-reversing carousel represented by trotting, horse-headed performers and the disturbing live musical backing of David Paul Jones (piano) and Robin Mason (cello) all come together to create a piece that is an unqualified visual and aural success.

Yet on the third act, the play's strong identity slips somewhat. The adult Patrick Mulvey and Michael Gray invest the boys' roles with just the right amount of wide-eyed naiveté throughout, although the powerplay between Will's father Mr Halloway (just 54, and apparently in the throes of an unsympathetic, almost Dorian Gray-like fear of ageing) and the rather explicitly black-hatted Mr Dark is somewhat too obviously shaded in light and dark.

Where a more carefully-weighted delivery might have nurtured the comments on mortality, inheritance and the love between father and son that lurk in the background, one particular scene where plants in the audience egg on a climactic carnival game does steer close to pantomime territory. For the younger audience, though, this is no bad thing.

Touring around Scotland and to Manchester, until Saturday 1st November.