An up-and-coming Sussex playwright is helping to pen the new musical by West End legend Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Charlotte Jones, who lives in Fiveways, Brighton, is the first woman to collaborate so closely with the king of musicals.

She has written the story on which he will base The Woman In White, an adaptation of the Wilkie Collins novel.

It is expected to debut in the West End in September next year.

Charlotte said: "My job is to take the novel, which is almost 700 pages long and, like Dickens, was written a bit like a soap opera of its time with lots of cliffhangers, and do an adaptation of it.

"Andrew will come up with the music and the lyricist will turn my words into lyrics."

Lord Lloyd Webber had seen one of Charlotte's earlier plays, In Flame, and was happy to entrust her with the job.

"It was quite a gamble for him," said Charlotte. "As he keeps saying, he has never worked with a woman before and I was quite a new kid on the block. But I think he likes working with new people."

She said she was too closely involved to know whether The Woman in White would be another huge hit but believed the composer was back doing what he did best.

She said: "The Victorian period is absolutely his territory. In some ways it's a return to The Phantom Of The Opera and I think for people who love that this will also be their cup of tea.

"It contains three very strong roles for women and Andrew loves writing for women. My challenge was to make it as much of a feminist piece as possible."

Charlotte spent six years as an actress but found it depressing and frustrating to have so little control.

Her decision to try writing quickly paid off and she won the Critics' Circle Most Promising Playwright Award in 1999.

Her play, Martha, Josie And The Chinese Elvis, also won gongs and her stage play Humble Boy a string of awards, including the People's Choice Best New Play Award 2002.

She has written a series of plays for Radio 4, television screenplays such as Mother's Ruin for Carlton TV and film scripts including Dogstar, although what she says she really wants to do is write a novel.

Six months ago she and partner Paul Bazely, an actor soon to appear in Holby City, left London and moved to Brighton with their young baby.

She does much of her writing at home, seeking inspiration from the seagulls and the views of the Downs from her window.

She said: "I don't miss acting one bit. When I was rehearsing at the National and one of the actresses was ill, I was asked to read it. But the acting muscle just didn't work any more."

Humble Boy, which enjoyed sell-out success at the National Theatre, the West End and on Broadway and has been acclaimed one of the finest new plays of recent years, is the first of Charlotte's plays to be performed at Brighton's Theatre Royal.

The story of a mother and son has its most obvious parallel in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

It runs from Monday, November 17, until Saturday, November 22. Tickets are available from the box office on 01273 328488.