MARK Babych and Mike Kenny, director and writer respectively, met when Mark directed The Railway Children at Waterloo Station in 2011.

The pair now reunite for Hull Truck Theatre's staging of another work by the prolific York playwright, his reinvention of Cinderella with five rats, one romance and no cheese that was premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2009.

"I never saw it at the Playhouse but I got to know Mike when I had the pleasure of re-staging The Railway Children, and I'd also worked with Ivan Stott, the 2009 show's composer, in my time at the Bolton Octagon, where he did the scores for shows like Death Of A Salesman, A View From The Bridge and To Sir With Love."

Cinderella now forms Mark's Christmas show at Hull Truck, where he took over as artistic director in May 2013. He is full of admiration for Mike's writing.

"He's written it with a sense of joie de vivre and fun that invites you at certain points to think of the best characteristics of pantomime, but it also has an enormous heart to it at its centre, looking at Cinderella's life through the eyes of the rats, who tell her story," he says.

"So there are some extremely touching moments as well as all the humorous moments.

"It's also a bit anarchic and I think our cast of actor-musicians have really embraced that anarchy, but they've also respected the really serious side of it too. The result is that it's a great family show, and we've tried to do it to appeal to as broad an age range as possible. We're saying it's a show for anyone from the age of four or five to if you're still able to make it to the theatre aged over 100. We're not going to stop you."

One stand-out feature to the 2014 production is the music, just as it was in 2009, but the music has changed.

"Ivan wasn't available to do the new show and he'd never written down his music from the premiere, so I looked at a new opportunity," says Mark. "I wanted to further develop the theatre's relationship with James Frewer, a young Hull composer who's a great talent.

"We've been working together for over a year: he did the British rock'n'roll arrangements for our production of A Taste Of Honey and he's also part of our Middle Child project, so this seemed a great chance to work with James again.

"We have five actor-musicians plus Annabel Betts as Cinderella, and the music has been largely inspired by what we've worked on to make a rat world: the notion of being unloved; that vermin world; feeling abandoned and cast out."

Babych, his cast and Frewer looked at the notion of being a migrant, harking back to travellers' tales.

"It's that status when you're seen as being a bit dirty, a bit grubby, where people say 'we don't like you much', and we also wanted to explore the notion of the rats being a renegade band, so we go from gipsy music to.. .I won't say where, as I don't want to spoil it, but it takes us into interesting territory," says Mark.

"And Mike's script is so deliciously sparse that the actors can take it wherever their imagination wants to go, and we should celebrate that in a Christmas show that will get right into your heart."

It will not spoil your enjoyment to reveal more of the musical content. "The songs start with a gipsy-style waltz, a kind of renegade ragtime rat song; there's a tango when the rats tell Cinderella she can go to the ball, and we have a beautiful Pogues-style number at the end," says Mark.

"So this is a show where there's great music, a lot of fun, things to make you laugh, things to make you cry, things that are epic; everything you could want from a Christmas show."

Cinderella runs at Hull Truck Theatre until January 10. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk