Since Hans Christian Andersen penned a very short story entitled The Princess and the Pea in the 1830s.

In that story, the princess - so sensitive that she can't get to sleep on a pile of mattresses because of a single pea lodged underneath - doesn't appear until the end, and then only as a device to give the story its happy ending.

Canberra independent theatre group Serious Theatre thought there had to be more to it than this, and set about reworking the classic tale about a frustrated prince trying to find a wife to satisfy his overwrought mother.

The result is PEA!, a play aimed at four to 10-year-olds commissioned by the Street Theatre as part of the Made in Canberra season. It's part of a three-year partnership with Centenary of Canberra to support the creative development of new and emerging artists in the ACT.

In this version, the princess is a fearless, orphaned dragon-hunter, the prince is a henpecked young man longing for adventure and his mother a reality-television addict, and the pea is the story's narrator.

It is, says director Barb Barnett, an expanded take on the classic tale, playing with gender stereotypes and sending a different message to the young audience.

"She's street-smart, and he's book-smart, and they get to learn from each other's experiences as a consequence," she said.

"The princess does not exist, really, in the original story, she's just someone who appears in a doorway, is forced into a situation where she is tested by the queen … That's the message through the play, that a princess is so soft-skinned and delicate that she will feel it no matter what it is. We've gone off on a slightly different tangent, so the core question became, what is true nobility? Where does compassion come from, where does a sense of belonging and where we are actually come from?"

The play, which opens on Saturday, is Serious Theatre's first foray into children's theatre, and has been an opportunity to demonstrate the endless possibilities that exist within a single space.

The company has often used installations as part of its work, and the performance space at the Street has also been transformed into a museum, with the walls populated by portraits of various vegetables.

"I think kids are a great audience to reach in terms of if you get to be the first company who shows them the theatre is not always about sitting down in an auditorium, and that fairytales are not always as they appear on the page," said production designer Gillian Schwab.

"That's a wonderful opportunity, and it will develop them as an adult audience that's happy to come to installation-based or experimental works."

Barnett said while children were potentially a tough audience because of their innate honesty, there was no need to treat them differently. "We haven't shied away from the fact that there are characters external to the story who die - [Princess] Gwen's charge is to make sure that that doesn't happen to more people, so it becomes part of the storytelling," she said.

The play's ultimate message didn't have to be dumbed down either. "You can make mistakes, and be wrong and right at the same time and that's completely OK. I don't think that's a message that is too complex," Schwab said.

"It's okay to acknowledge that, and I think it's often not acknowledged in work for children - everything has to turn out right."

Barnett said the play's visual premise hinged on the very last lines of Andersen's original tale, which has the pea placed in a museum for posterity.

"The reality in this play is that things turn out right too, people meet each other and friendships develop as a consequence, otherwise we couldn't be in the Museum of Legendary Vegetables."

■ PEA! A Tale of Truly Vegetariable Proportion opens at the Street Theatre on Saturday, April 20 and runs until April 27. Bookings: 6247 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au.