The live stage adaptation of David Walliams' best-selling book, The Midnight Gang, is coming to the IPAC.

A worldwide hit, The Midnight Gang was the biggest-selling children's book of 2016.

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Work on the stage adaptation began in 2019 when CDP Theatre Producers commissioned playwright Maryam Master to adapt the award-winning book.

Master is a writer with more than 20 years' experience creating work for stage and screen.

She said the adaptation process, particularly for such a much-loved book, was a "delicate art form".

"You have to honour the original work, but also bring your own flair to the play," she said.

"Distilling long stories into a one-hour show can be tricky. You have to be economical and yet somehow keep the essence of the book.

"There's also the fact that we have five actors and Midnight Gang has dozens of characters. Lots of doubling and of course some poor characters get the chop."

Master said the challenges of writing for a young audience included finding the perfect balance between "silly and serious, utterly ridiculous and profound".

"There is no perfect formula," she said.

"Of course there are some formulaic elements, like humour (fart jokes never fail), suspense, evil villains (we love to hate) and heroes (we want to see triumph), but ultimately it has to come from the heart.

"And Walliams is masterful in writing stories that make you laugh and cry in equal measure."

The show features the use of built-in puppetry elements to tell some of the more fantastical elements of the story.

In the story, 12-year-old Tom unexpectedly finds himself lonely and lost in St Crook's Hospital, and at the mercy of evil Matron. Tom feels like he'll never leave, but his fellow young patients have other ideas.

Each night when the clock strikes midnight, The Midnight Gang go on a series of amazing journeys as they turn the hospital into the places they've always wanted to go.

The Midnight Gang will be performed from June 30 to July 1 at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre.

Tickets here.

The show's duration is approximately one hour (no interval).

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