Badapple Theatre Company, The Mice Who Ate Christmas, on tour until January 5 2014

First it was the Swinging Sixties pop tale of an Italian milkman turned beat group star in Eddie And The Gold Tops, then a quirky Yorkshire comedy of village life, love, allotments and football, The Carlton Colliers, and now the Green Hammerton company sees out 2013 with a Christmas carol-comedy, The Mice Who Ate Christmas (or The Real Silent Night Story).

All three have been written and directed by company founder and director Kate Bramley, and only Eddie And The God Tops was a revival, so Kate has had a hectic year.

“I did have to do a good amount of planning, going into the whole process of doing three shows in quick succession, as we went into the summer,” says Kate. “I wrote the first draft of the Christmas show first, then did The Carlton Colliers and came back to Christmas show once that had started, but I also had great help from our two associate directors, Sue Rosser on ‘Eddie’ and Paul Smith for ‘Colliers’.”

The Mice show is set in 1818 where hungry village mice Edna and Wilbur are seduced by a newspaper cutting about Switzerland: Land of Cheese. Setting sail for a mythical place paved with fromage, where the rivers run brimful of chocolate and the mountains are made of the mysterious Toblerone, they shelter in a village church on Christmas Eve but eat through the organ bellows by mistake, leaving the young priest without a note of music for Midnight Mass.

Edna and Wilbur must hurry to make amends, and in doing so, they inspire the writing of a new carol in a story based on the legend of the origins of Silent Night.

Badapple had staged A Yorkshire Christmas Carol for three years in a row and “could have done it again this year”. “But I decided we needed something different and so I looked at the story of Silent Night, which was written in 1818 by an Austrian priest, Joseph Mohr, on a guitar for the midnight service with lyrics by Franz Gruber, the local schoolteacher, after the alleged bellows-chewing incident,” says Kate.

“Basically I decided to re-tell it from the mice’s point of view, where it becomes the journey of two poor mice setting out from Yorkshire, as most of our stories are Yorkshire-based.

“For me, it’s about rooting your perspective, starting in Yorkshire in our case but looking out from there to have universal appeal – a philosophy that applies to writers generally.”

The show is in the tradition of Christmas family entertainment, rather than broad pantomime. “We’re making the show out of theatre magic and storytelling for all the generations: families with children aged eight upwards and adults without children too,” says Kate.

“The reason we say eight and upwards is that the humour is essentially word-based rather than slapstick, so we’re aiming at children who can be entertained by language as well as physical action. It's a balance of action and wit and repartee for the adults, which is really how pantomime works too.”

As ever, Jez Lowe's music will be an important ingredient in a Badapple show, alongside the inevitable finale of Silent Night. "We went for a more cinematic sound in 'Colliers' but this show is more reliant on songs that turn the action around , plus some upbeat comic songs – and there are lots of cheese and fondue gags too," says Kate.

Her cast comprises Zoe Land, last seen in Badapple's Lights Out Land Girls in the spring, and Bolton actor John Mulleady in his Badapple debut. "He did very well this summer in his Edinburgh Fringe show, Loving Dick, which he co-wrote and directed, and when he auditioned for us, he just seemed utterly personable, obviously very talented and willing to chance his arm at many accents and characters," says Kate.

He and Zoe are joined on stage by assorted puppets made by Sam Edwards. "There are various mice puppets and the final puppet is a mechanical Swiss goat, who's an inventor, who has just invented Toblerone in 1818," says Kate. "Well, he was ahead of his time!"

Once the tour of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and the West Midlands ends on January 5, Kate will turn her attention to Badapple's 2014 play to mark the centenary of the First World War, The Thankful Village. "These were the villages that lost no men in the war," says Kate, whose premiere will run from next April to June. "Again we were looking for an alternative perspective on the subject, and this show will be about the women the men left behind as well as those men who survived the war."

Badapple also will be working in collaboration with actor and professional clown Colin Moncrieff on another new show, The Daily Bread, written by Kate with Colin in charge of the physical antics.

"Colin played Stan Laurel for us in Laurel & Charlie, the story of when Laurel was Charlie Chaplin's understudy," says Kate. "The new play will be about a newspaper executive who goes into hiding as a local baker, and it'll be our first one-man show since The James Herriot Story in 2011. It'll going out on what we're calling our No Hall Too Small tour in July."

Badapple Theatre Company’s The Mice Who Ate Christmas is on tour until January 5 2014. Visit badappletheatre.com for tour dates and booking details. Box office: 01423 339168.