SWISS writer Peter Stamm’s magical story When We Lived In Uncle’s Hat transfers to the stage with rather more ease than any house move.

Stamm and illustrator Jutta Bauer readily gave permission for York Theatre Royal and Leeds children’s theatre company Tutti Frutti to perform this stage premiere, and as the icing on the cake the wonderfully named Finegan Kruckemeyer was entrusted with the adaptation, presented here by Tutti Frutti director Wendy Harris’s merry band of four acoustic actor-musicians.

What a good job the Irishman with the German ancestry and the Tasmanian home address has made of this surreal yet delightful story, no doubt drawing upon his own experience of moving home, and again delighting York audiences with his story-telling, just as he did with If Only The Lonely Were Home in April 2009.

Suitable for five-year-olds, their families and those celebrating the Tories’ abolition of Home Information Packs, Uncle’s Hat is the appropriately fast-moving tale of a boy called Sammy (accordion-playing Joe Woolmer) discovering that walls and bricks don’t make a house, but a family does.

His restless family lives in some pretty strange, wacky and wondrous places in pursuit of happiness and the ideal home: the house with the blue light; a bus; the moon; a cinema; in the middle of Nowhere; and on the brim of uncle’s hat. Add them together and it makes the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine look like psychedelia for beginners.

If the homes are hardly normal, the family members are not exactly a flat-pack assembly. Stepdad Franco (Michael Lambourne) is an Italian papa who enjoys roaring like a lion; mum Gerta (Lizzie Wort) has a manic laugh that makes birds fly away; sister Mali (Julia Gwynne) collects bracelets; much younger Brother Kareem (Lambourne again) lives in a super-hero fantasy world; Grandpa Eodolpho (Gwynne) enjoys telling scary stories. On second thoughts, maybe they are merely a more colourful expression of everyday families that will “always have songs, bad jokes and loud chatter” in their homes.

For all the often humorous tone of both Kruckemeyer’s script and Dominic Sales’s songs, there is room for sadness too: Sammy learns the importance of family only after choosing to strike out on his own path.

Finnegan’s economy of words – and always just the right words – is matched by the simple set design by Alison Heffernan that mirrors Bauer’s original illustrations. Boxes, in green and light and dark blue colours that match the floor map, contain cut-out props of the moon and such like, which enables scene changes to be as smooth as a Turkish barber’s shave.

Further enlivened by the contributions of movement director Ruth Tyson-Jones, this delightfully unusual show is moving in more ways than one and truly feels at home on the Studio stage. Catch it before it moves home after this weekend.

When We Lived In Uncle’s Hat, York Theatre Royal/Tutti Frutti, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday and on tour until December 5. York box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk