IN his 75th birthday year playwright Alan Ayckbourn has acquired some new collaborators – from the US, Tynemouth and Gateshead – to transform his 1998 play The Boy Who Fell Into A Book into a musical.

With Ayckbourn directing, the show is part of a season of new work at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Paul James, Eric Angus and Cathy Shostack are the team responsible for The Demon Headmaster musical. When they approached Ayckbourn about turning The Boy into a musical, he was up for the idea. "I just said good luck because I couldn't have done it," says the playwright. "I was a bit apprehensive because I'm always wary. But I'd seen one of their shows, The Demon Headmaster, so I knew they could write. We're not in the hands of maniacs."

James is the adaptor and lyricist, Shostack and Angus are the composers who work separately rather than together on songs. They took the new musical to Scarborough to play it through for Ayckbourn and he offered to direct it.

The story concerns ten-year-old Kevin Carter who, as the title suggests, falls into his book where he meets his fictional hero, tough hard-bitten PI Rockfist Slim. Together they set out on a quest to save the world.

"I didn't see the play, but read the book and kept seeing images of what it would be like on stage," says Shostak, a New Yorker living in London since 1968 who's worked in all sectors of the music biz from staff songwriter to composing for TV ads.

Angus, born in the North-East and a teacher in London for many years, adds: "The thing about this piece is that the songs almost jump out at you. Almost everywhere you can see a place for a song. We were very keen to do a family show."

He and James, who studied musical theatre with Stephen Sondheim during his period as Cameron Mackintosh visiting professor at Oxford University, met through the writers' organisation Mercury Musical Developments. "I couldn't believe there was another Geordie writer of musicals," says Angus.

"We got together and wrote a show called The Demon Headmaster based on quite a well-known children's book and BBC-TV series so it had a great recognition factor. It toured around and was successful. Alan came to see it at an early stage and that's where the connection to the play came up."

James says that Ayckbourn has been fantastic to work with because "he's let us get on with it" although his one consistent piece of advice was to keep the action going and not go off into any dead ends.

It's very much a collaboration and one that's continuing with the trio working on a new musical The Wimbledon Poisoner, based on the novel by Nigel Williams. Before that comes the musical The Boy. It's unusual to have two composers – Cathy and Eric – and the challenge is not to have two musical languages going on.

"We worked very closely to make sure the songs sound as if they all come from the same show," says James. "I write the words and we were lucky enough, as Cathy says, to have a wonderfully achieved play as the starting point.

"The challenge is how does that become a musical? Which bits can we tighten up, lose, add to? But having done all of that anyone who's seen the play will recognise it because the major events and a lot of the dialogue is there.

"it just goes off on these tangents called songs which we believe take the action on. It's not just let's stop for a song like in a panto or something. They have a dramatic purpose, which makes it sound very serious but the great thing about the show is that it's fun, it's a laugh.

"The nice spin-off we hope – although it's not the main reason for doing it – is to get kids interested in books. Parents and kids will come out and say that was interesting I want to know more about that book or that kind of book. So it's win win, I think."

Ayckbourn sees it as a family show not a children's show. "It's for anyone who ever secretly read under the bedclothes as a child and who has ever been captivated by a story in a book. In terms of a musical it's small scale, in that it doesn't have a cast of hundreds, but I feel with big potential."

He emphasises this musical version is a different take with a different cast. "This is new, very very new. I've started to lie awake thinking how we get round some of the problems we've been set. Interesting problems. None of them are insoluble but the play was written for a family audience and when I put my family mode hat on the thing you keep thinking is of the kid with the shortest attention span just thinking 'then what happens, then what happens?'. I want them to ask that question every ten seconds. So,it's driven. Any good play should do that even with slow-witted adult audiences."

  • The Boy Who Fell Into A Book: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, July 18 to Aug 31. Box Office: 01723-370541 and SJT.uk.com