YORK Theatre Royal will stage Cinderella for the first time since 2006 as the inaugural pantomime in the newly redeveloped theatre next December and January.

As is the custom, dame Berwick Kaler made the announcement after the final performance of Dick Whittington (And His Meerkat) on Sunday night at the Theatre Royal's temporary tented home, the Signal Box Theatre at the National Railway Museum.

"Cinderella is everyone’s favourite and it just seems fitting to celebrate the newly restored theatre with a title that has all the ingredients for magnificent sets and costumes, pathos, slapstick, inventive lunacy," said writer and co-director Mr Kaler, looking forward to his 38th year as Britain's longest serving dame. "I'll even even retain the plot. Mind you, I’ve not written it yet, so don’t quote me."

Cinderella will mark Mr Kaler's 70th birthday – the anniversary falls on October 31 – but the story has no traditional dame's role, instead calling on him to play one of the two Ugly Sisters, so who might he partner? Watch this space, especially as he promised the Dick Whittington cast on Sunday "some interesting characters to play".

The Theatre Royal's once-in-a-lifetime pantomime transfer to the NRM, in Leeman Road, drew audiences of almost 50,000 to the production run from December 10 to January 24 in the 1,000-seat, purpose-built Signal Box.

Unique architectural discoveries during the Theatre Royal's £4.1million redevelopment project led to the need to switch Dick Whittington to the NRM, where the design of a rail track with platforms and ten rows of seating either side was the first ever pantomime to be staged in a traverse theatre.

The Theatre Royal has received its largest ever number of letters, messages, phone calls and social-media posts in praise of a production that placed cast and audience within touching distance of each other.

On Sunday, Mr Kaler also announced that set and costume designer Mark Walters would follow up his spectacular designs for the one-off Dick Whittington by returning for his second Theatre Royal panto next winter.

One absentee, however, will be the dame's "Essex nephew", Vincent Gray, for whom the title role at the NRM was the end of the line. He is to leave the acting profession for a new career as a fitness coach and personal trainer.

Tickets for Cinderella will go on sale in person only on Tuesday, March 1 from the Theatre Royal box office in the De Grey Rooms, St Leonard’s Place, and then will be available on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

The Theatre Royal will re-open with writer Bryony Lavery and artistic director Damian Cruden's re-imagining of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited from April 22.