‘There was once a little girl who was very pretty and delicate, but in summer she was forced to run about with bare feet, she was so poor, and in winter wear very large wooden shoes, which made her little insteps quite red, and that looked so dangerous!”

So begins the classic fairy tale about little Karen, written by Hans Christian Andersen and first published in 1845. It’s no gentle story, though, becoming rather dark of plot when a pair of red shoes obtained by Karen takes her over. It’s a story being told at the Playhouse next week as the Kneehigh Theatre company revives its eight-year old adaptation.

“When choosing what to put on,” Kneehigh’s artistic director Emma Rice told me, “I always look at the why: why do I want to tell the story, why do I need to tell it and why is it still relevant? Hans Christian Andersen was trying to warn women off from being bad or following their passions; it’s very much a morality tale about what can happen to you if you stray off the path. Of course, the story was passed on to Andersen and in a sense it’s been passed on to me and I’ve given it a new ending and a new spin.”

How so? “Lots of versions of the story exist, and the girl is very punished in every one of them: she usually dies — sometimes she goes into servitude, but I’ve given my girl a future!”

Rice is also enthusiastic about the musical element in this version of The Red Shoes, with an original score by the company’s regular composer Stu Barker played live, aided by an eclectic recorded soundtrack of Wagner, Offenbach, Philip Glass and Jurassic 5 beat music.

I wondered how much the show was aimed at a young audience — publicity refers to “brave children, ideally eight and over”.

“I don’t expect them to be a majority, but it is a good show for children, particularly girls.

“In my experience, adults find the production harder than children do: they project themselves into the story much more, while children are good at understanding that it’s just a story, that you have to go through a story to find out what happens. You don’t want to take the little ones, but if you’ve got a 12-year-old daughter, bring her along!”

Emma Rice joined Kneehigh in 1994, becoming full-time in 2000. A couple of years later, she won a Theatrical Management Association award as Best Director when The Red Shoes was first produced and started running the company — now celebrating its 30th anniversary — five years ago.

The company came to the Playhouse last year with its take on Brief Encounter and tours widely both in Britain and abroad. But its home and heart is in Truro, and as an artist, Rice feels the Cornish influence strongly.

“It’s a complicated equation, really. You really do feel away from other things, uninfluenced by other arts organisations or politics. We live there and do what we do amidst a great community of colleagues and friends. It’s the best time of my life to be down there, surrounded by the most amazing landscape and not much mobile phone signal! It’s a haven.”

And the company’s spiritual home seems to give it a refreshingly open and straightforward approach to its theatrical work: “There’s no form to what we do. We choose a story, we know why we choose it and we see what happens.”

“The clear sunshine streamed so warmly through the window into the pew where Karen sat. Her heart was so full of sunshine, peace and joy that it broke. Her soul flew on the sunshine to God, and there no one asked after the Red Shoes.” Hans Christian Andersen’s closing words, entirely to be disregarded by Kneehigh next week.