WHERE do our memories go and where does our memory go?

Working in tandem with York Theatre Royal once more, Leeds children's theatre company Tutti Frutti explores how we build our memories and sometimes how we lose them, in Monday's Child, a new Brendan Murray play for three to seven year olds but with resonance for parents and grandparents too.

Tutti Frutti artistic director Wendy Harris had noted how children often engage with older relatives who are troubled by memory loss and asked regular writing associate Brendan Murray to create a 45-minute play that puts those two elements together.

Monday's Child depicts a young child learning about the world and an older person faced by a changing world because she can no longer remember what day it is or whether she has met the little girl previously.

"What day is it?" asks the Woman (Erika Poole). "Today!" replies the bonny Girl (Josie Cerise), trying to be helpful, but not grasping what the Woman means.

On Catherine Chapman's beautiful dream-like set, they are sitting on a park bench, with a trim row of white tree branches behind them – good for hanging props – and a carpet of leaves spread before them. On there stand huddles of boxes and cases, white and yellow like faded memories.

Together the Girl and Woman will explore these boxes, in the manner of children with dressing-up boxes and older people looking through the attic chapters of their past, and in doing so the Girl begins to build a box of memories while helping the Woman tap into hers.

Humour and imagination, singing and dancing, playing with numbers and the alphabet, blowing bubbles and dressing up all come into play, and play is what lies at the heart of Murray's unhurried, gentle, beatific piece of storytelling theatre.

We are never too old to play, and in playing, the Girl brings out the young in the older Woman and vice versa. This transaction is physically symbolised by them swapping dealy bopper and beret, a scene that is truly moving, and typical of the lovely subtleties of Murray's play and its celebrations of being young and old alike.

Murray captures how, whatever age we are, we always face new challenges,although the tools we have change through the years, and at both ends of our journey we do not understand everything. Children and adults can discover much from this play, which is directed by Harris with understanding, sensitivity and a sense of fun.

Erika Poole and Josie Cerise are an utter delight together, perfect partners on that park bench of memories.

Monday's Child, Tutti Frutti/York Theatre Royal, York Theatre Royal Studio, until Saturday and also on June 10, 11am and l.30pm. Howard Assembly Room, Leeds Grand Theatre, May 23 and 24, 11am. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 243 9999 or operanorth.co.uk/howard-assembly-room