Living out your dreams

Will Tuckett doesn't look a bit like a ballet dancer. He bounces into the room like a puppy on puppet strings, gangly limbs scattered at unlikely angles. In the ballet world, where it's all about the look, he's the joker in the pack.

'I never really enjoyed the hard physical work of dance,' he admits. 'But I love inventing characters and entering totally fantastical worlds. It feels like you don't ever have to grow up. It's escapism for adults and I'm really not a kitchen-sink kind of person.'

It's that sense of childlike wonder that has seen Tuckett evolve parallel careers as one of the Royal Ballet's most acclaimed character performers - he's just played Lord Capulet in Romeo And Juliet - and as a choreographer whose theatrical imagination creates tales stretching right across the age spectrum. His latest venture, an adaptation of Catherine Storr's childhood fantasy novel Marianne Dreams is, he says, his toughest challenge yet.

Marianne Dreams is a marked departure for the Almeida Theatre, a venue not noted for family-oriented shows (a term Tuckett whispers in mock shame). It tells the tale of a bedridden girl who tries to make her world better through her drawings, which magically come to life. It's one of those stories you might know without recognising the title - it inspired 1988 cult movie Paperhouse and has been a TV series and an opera.

'It's not in any sense a fluffy Christmas show. It's got a set of very complex ideas and is all about painting the world of dreams, that strange lack of logic that exists in our sleep fantasies. It's definitely got its creepy side,' says Tuckett, who admits to waking at four in the morning with nightmares over staging such tricky subject matter.

'It's always scary when you move outside your comfort zone. At first, I thought it would be a dance theatre show, because it's full of notions of floating and flying. But it's really a play with movement.' To emphasise the point he thumbs the 70-page script on the desk in front of him with a look of incredulity.

Still, Tuckett is not one to duck a challenge. 'When I read the book I envisaged a huge chase across hills. And lots of bicycles. Moira Buffini, the writer who adapted it, said: "It's totally unstageable!" Then we looked at each other and said: "Let's do it anyway!" Marianne Dreams is a real collaborative effort. Usually both writers and choreographers want to structure the work, so there's a face-off somewhere along the line. It's been inspiring to work with someone who doesn't have that kind of ego.' Ego is something you certainly couldn't accuse Tuckett of.

Bouncing back and forth between grown-up shows, such as Seven Deadly Sins and Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods, and acclaimed versions of children's classics such as Wind In The Willows and Pinocchio (revived at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre this Christmas), his career enjoys a rare balance between performer, choreographer and director.

It's a surprising portfolio for someone whose creative fires were forged in ballet, where usually only those with tunnel vision survive.

Tuckett decided early on at the Royal Ballet that, given his idiosyncratic look, the big romantic classical roles were never going to head his way. So he embraced the notoriously difficult character roles, making a riotous fist of the Widow Simone in La Fille Mal Gardée, while honing his choreographic skills from an early age. Now he's increasingly branching out into theatre and film, he's grateful for his solid ballet grounding.