York Theatre Royal and Tutti Frutti’s production of Hare And Tortoise off on tour

However, 6ft 3ins Barnaby Southgate and 4ft 9ins Luisa Guerreiro are in the show for the long run: the Theatre Royal and Tutti Frutti co-production will be on the road until early in the New Year.

Aesop’s short fable about opposites, time and friendship has been turned by playwright Brendan Murray into a 50-minute play, directed by Tutti Frutti artistic director Wendy Harris, with input from the two actors.

Being offered the roles “quite a long time” before doing the performances gave Barnaby and Luisa the chance to play their part in transforming a ten-line story into a 50-minute play for children aged three to seven.

“We were given a framework to work from, and though the nature of devising a play is usually a two-way process between the writer and the actors, it was five-way for Hare And Tortoise because we also had Wendy, Dom [composer and musical director Dom Sales] and Ruth [movement director Ruth Tyson-Jones] for the music and movement,” says Barnaby.

“What was interesting for us was going into a school and seeing what they found funny and which movements they could relate to,” says Luisa. “They very much appreciated the energy, the characterisation and the relationship.”

Such information was then taken into the stage performances.

“The first time I met Barnaby was at the audition and then at the recall Wendy put us together, and it’s been an interesting challenge working with him because he’s so tall, so you have to work out what will look best,” says Luisa, who further emphasises Tortoise’s contrast with Hare by using her native Madeira accent opposite the English airs of Barnaby from Oxford.

For director Wendy Harris, it was important that Hare And Tortoise was “not cartoony”. “I want to know how Hare feels and how Tortoise feels in each scene, and I also don’t want to pander to children,” she says.

“They’re called Hare and Tortoise and we nod to those characteristics but we’re not making them look exactly like that. You just buy into who they are, rather than through a bunny suit and a shell.”

In his adaptation, writer Brendan Murray has focused on the childhood transition from certainty to realising that everything is not certain. “Hare goes from winning every time to discovering what it feels like if Hare doesn’t win and he finds it’s a world that’s more exciting because it’s more unpredictable and more interesting because of that,” he says.

Whether you live life in the fast or slow lane, that statement is equally true.

• York Theatre Royal and Tutti Frutti’s production of Hare And Tortoise runs in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday, then on tour until January 7 2012. York box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk