THERE’S the story of “Cinderella”, the panto and the Disney version, but hands up anyone who knew Rodgers and Hammerstein had written a musical for TV on this time-honoured theme.

And this is the show Canberra’s Ickle Pickle Productions is bringing to us in January, with a mixed adult-child cast of 37 actors, and you can hardly wipe the smile off the face of co-director and producer Justin Watson.

They’ve all – principals, mice, footmen, villagers and cats – been busy working since September on the so-called “Enchanted” edition, based on the 1997 teleplay that starred Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother. Before that it played to millions in the 1965 version starring Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella, a remake of the 1957 telefilm starring Julie Andrews. It’s a Rodgers and Hammerstein, full of songs you can hum along to.

“It is one of those shows that ticks all our boxes, catering for adults and children both in the cast and the audience,” the excited Watson tells “CityNews” and just like recent shows such as “Oliver” and “Seussical”, there are lots of “really good roles” for young and old alike.

The company, formed by Watson in 2005 when Belconnen Community Centre’s Jan Wawrzynczak suggested they needed a resident theatre company, has made holiday pantomimes its stock-in-trade for years.

“It’s a company rebranding exercise to get away from pantomime, which is not what our better actors in Canberra expect,” he explains. And happily, 100 people auditioned.

Top of the task list is the music and Ickle Pickle’s seasoned musical director Susan Davenport has been fine-tuning an electronic soundtrack. Because of the small size of Belconnen Theatre, Watson says, a 21-piece orchestra is out, so she’s reproduced that sound on CD.

Watson is co-directing with Hannah McFadden, who will also choreograph. Coincidentally, she was in the chorus of a Tempo Theatre production of “Cinderella” directed by Watson in 2005, and they’ve collaborated ever since.

Rebranding is one thing, but turning a pumpkin into a stagecoach is something else. With the idea of creating “a bit of an off-kilter feel, not a period production,” Watson says, costume designer Janette Humphrey and set designers Steve Galinec and Anita Davenport have gone for a funky twist, more in the style of the musical “Wicked”.

Other than that, it’s pretty much the Cinderella you know, with Adellene Fitzsimmons as Cinderella, her big break, Watson beams.

All the lead roles are played by adults. There is some modernity. Prince Christopher (not Charming) declines to have a wife forced on him, but the suggestion that the Fairy Godmother might represent Cinderella’s dead mother comes straight from the original French story by Perrault.

Watson is optimistic that “Cinderella” will sell out, as their summer shows have in recent years, describing it as “a fantastic school holiday entertainment in a nice cool air-conditioned theatre, great for kids, for parents and for grandparents.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella”, Belconnen Theatre, January 9-24, bookings to canberraticketing.com.au or 6275 2700.

Photos by ANDREW CAMPBELL