IT'S one of those things that you think will never happen to you," said director Rob Holcroft.

"And sometimes we forget how amazing it sounds when we tell people we have written a musical which is being put on in Hollywood."

Paul Hutton and Rob Holcroft may be chatting over lunch in a small city caf but these two Worcester directors are about to change the way Hollywood thinks about musicals.

"You spend your whole life working and when you get to Hollywood it really amazing, you can't quite believe it," said Rob.

"But it's not as sparkly as it's made out," said Paul.

"When you've lived there for a couple of weeks it feels just like a normal place."

Paul and Rob have recently returned from Tinsel Town after a developing the musical Behead or Behind, and will return next Easter to direct it when it opens at the Hollywood theatre, Stage 52.

The saga began when Rob grudgingly went to a school reunion where he ran into an old friend who was producing a movie based entirely in the West Midlands, called The Ring and the Seal.

Through the film the pair came into contact with David Austin, a famous theatre and film executive producer with his own theatre in LA.

"David approached us with a musical he had written 20 years ago," said Rob.

"It ran at over six hours and had 39 songs," said Paul.

"He brought us in for different ideas to make it fresh and revamp the music."

Two years later, Paul and Rob had overhauled the script to two hours, kept seven original songs and written seven others along with the help of Nick Smith, a colleague at Worcester College of Technology.

Behead or Behind is a fantasy about a queen who cannot conceive a child and hires a prostitute to bear her a son to inherit the throne.

But, when the prostitute gives birth to a girl, the queen decides to raise the baby as a boy.

The child, called George, gets very confused when "he" hits puberty and develops breasts.

Meanwhile, the King's step-sister Lady Cantor has designs for her own son Willoughby to be king. But Willoughby questions his own sexuality when he falls for George.

The script features other colourful roles such as sex-crazed pervert Brother Libertyn, who has bondage gear under his habit, and the foppish and camp Lord Catamite.

Rob and Paul have made Behead and Behind something entirely new for Hollywood because the roles are race and gender interchangeable.

"We are hoping that the Queen will be played by a man, a bit like a pantomime dame" said Paul

"Panto does not exist in America, so this kind of musical theatre is entirely new to America and that is what is so exciting about it."

They also hope to change to Hollywood attitude towards race.

"Britain is much more multicultural," said Paul.

"Hollywood is very, very small," said Rob originally from Chaddesley Corbett, near Kidderminster.

Both Rob and Paul have lived in Worcester for years now and have become well known as directors, writers, choreographers and performers.

This month the pair have directed West Side Story for Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society and Bye Bye Birdie at the Worcester College of Technology, where they lecture in performing arts.

"We hope to inspire our students because we have experience and fresh information about the industry they hope to get into," said Paul.