"On a terribly cold and dark New Year's Eve, a poor little girl attempts to sell matches on the street, with bare head and naked feet. She is wearing a pair of too large slippers when she leaves home, but she looses them, one she can not find and the other is seized upon by a boy who runs away saying he could use it as a cradle. So the little girl goes on, red and blue with cold, the snowflakes falling on her long, fair hair. She dares not go home, fearing her father, for she has sold no matches.

Desperately trying to warm herself, the Little Match Girl begins to light her matches. As she lights each matchstick, a new fantastic image appears in front of her, only to disappear as the matchstick looses its flame. The first image is that of a hot iron stove. The next is a fully-decorated table, complete with candles and ornaments.

When the match goes out, the Christmas lights rise higher and higher. Then she sees a star fall. The Little Match Girl remembers her dead grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who had told her that when a star falls, a soul is going up to God. She again lights a match. In the brightness stands her old grandmother. "O take me with you", cries the little one who makes haste to light the whole bundle of matches to keep her grandmother there. The Grandmother takes her up to heaven and in the morning her little frozen body is found, with a smile on her face."

Martyn Jacques: "As a songwriter I am always looking for fresh inspiration for subjects on which to write . One of my chief sources of inspiration is to take other people work and adapt them into songs. The poignant and tragic tale of the LMG is one such inspiration for me . I was originally approached by the Hans Christian Andersen foundation to adapt one of his stories to coincide with the bicentennial of his birth ( or death ?) and of all his stories the Little Match Girl has always been the most sad and beautiful, I hope the music and theatre piece that we we are creating will reflect this"