MIKE Kenny has nothing against pantomimes, but the York playwright prefers the broader writing opportunities presented by fables and fairytales.

“I like pantomime as a consumer, but I just don’t do it as a writer because I think of panto as ‘single note’ entertainment,” he says. “I like to think that the emotional range of what I write is wider, and there’s more at stake.

“You can be moved as well as made to laugh, as my shows tap into the realities of life, whereas pantomime’s aim is to lift you out of those realities for a few hours – though that’s not to say I write plays that are sad when compared with panto.

“I would hope that you find more than humour in my plays, but at the same time I want people to have a good time, as it’s unforgivable if it’s dull or worthy. I do not ascribe to that notion of adults having to suffer dull theatre and I wouldn’t serve that up to children either. Never!”

Mike’s latest play is his fourth Big Stories For Little People collaboration with director Gail McIntyre at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, where Aladdin is running in the Courtyard Theatre.

“Aladdin is one of the best known of the pantomime stories and actually my journey through Aladdin is very similar; what I do, like I did for Cinderella last year, is start with the story that people know, rather than mess around with it,” he says.

“I do the story that people expect as these stories have mythical resonance, though Aladdin is an ‘odd’ one, loaded with Middle Eastern mysticism.

“I always do a lot of research and Aladdin is interesting because there are so many re-tellings of the story, so I decided I would find the most authentic version, but in fact it turns out it was always a fake, thought now to have been written by a Frenchman after the tales of the Arabian Nights were translated from the original Arabic in the 1700s.”

In the absence of an authentic version, Mike chose to be true to the spirit of the familiar tale while giving it a modern context.

“What I’ve done is set it in a market that looks like Leeds market.

“Everything that is told comes out of the market stalls, both domestic and exotic, which is true to Leeds market today, as it’s now multicultural,” he says.

One character that differs considerably from the pantomime version is the Princess.

“I had a lot of problems with the idea of the Princess being locked away, so I decided ‘I can’t do that in the 21st century’,” says Mike.

“I thought of her more in the Paris Hilton mode, someone who had had everything she wanted throughout her life and is not so much protected from the world as just not interested in it.”

• Aladdin runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 15 2011. Box office: 0113 213 7700.