Coronation Street star Wendi Peters talks ahead of Wolverhampton theatre performance

It visits Wolverhampton Grand Theatre between July 31 and August 5 and stars Wendi Peters ­- famed as Coronation Street's Cilla Battersby - as the Queen Of Hearts and leading musical theatre star Dave Willetts as the White Rabbit.

Based on the 1865 novel, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, this musical was a story that for composer Frank Wildhorn started with a broken elevator in the building in which he lived.

"In the late 90s, I was fortunate enough to have three shows on Broadway - Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Civil War - and so I was living in the Upper West side, in a big high-rise building," he says. "I have two sons, and the elevator up to our home was always broken and I was running out of stories to tell my kids about why they couldn't fix the elevator. For some reason I told them that if anyone did manage to get on it, and take it all the way down, through Macy's department store, you eventually got to Wonderland.

"I have always started every project by making a record, even my musicals start off as records, I'm a record guy. With Wonderland, I started to piece it together in my mind and I had envisaged Avril Lavigne as Alice, Bette Midler was the Queen Of Hearts and Luther Vandross was the Caterpillar - that helped me make a start.

"What happened in the time of putting it together was that Time Warner and AOL merged, which is considered the biggest business disaster in America. The stocks dropped considerably and so Time Warner had to sell off all their music. There wasn't an option for me to do my crazy thing and make records anymore, so I just set about making Wonderland straight into a musical."

Wendi added: "My job as an actress is to be creative. I don't like doing anything for too long – I played Cilla Battersby in Coronation Street for four years, the longest time I've ever worked on the same role. I loved it but it got to that point where I wasn't doing anything different and I knew I needed to create something new and get back out there to do theatre again, where I'd learnt my craft.

"I just love the process of reading something off the page and thinking through how I'm going to best tell the story.

"In the case of Wonderland we've got nothing really to copy and that's lovely. I don't think that any actor should ever copy what's been before, but of course if the material's out there you're going to have a sneaky look at what's been done previously.

"Apart from a performance by the Broadway cast at the Tony Awards there's little else online and I love that because I can think through the character myself and be my best interpretation of the role and hopefully bring something new to it."

Frank considers there to be two types of music. "The two types of music are great and not so great. The whole idea is to listen to everything as much as you can. Whatever you're interested in, always be a student, keep learning.

"I find that my biggest successes are those where whatever community I'm writing for become proprietary of it. I hope the audiences in the UK take Wonderland as theirs, it's their show."

Wonderland is now on sale at the Grand Theatre. Tickets can be booked online at grandtheatre.co.uk, by calling 01902 42 92 12 or visiting the box office in person.