THE multi-award winning Mark Bruce Company will bring their haunting new dance/theatre re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Theatre Royal Winchester next week.

With direction and choreography by visionary artistic director Mark Bruce, a cast of nine outstanding performers and dramatic design by the same creative team behind Dracula and The Odyssey, Macbeth will realise a beautifully harrowing vision of an internal wasteland formed from the pursuit of power through ruthless means.

Drama, dance and film audiences will be drawn to Bruce's imaginative vision of the treacherous Macbeths' toxic world of jealousy, ambition and corruption.

Set in a supernatural and brutal underworld, both tragic and beautiful, with a horror film atmosphere of menace and murder ... all of this will be packed into Bruce's new production.

He told the Daily Echo: "I first read Macbeth as a teenager and returning to it now the images, atmosphere it evokes have not changed. Its power lies in a relentless tale of supernatural horror told with a beauty and symbolism that reaches to the tragic state of the ‘other’. The supernatural is always present in Macbeth, bending our own thoughts and perceptions as well as those of the protagonists. It infects us, always one step ahead, and Macbeth’s decisions are made in the world of a nightmare as if there is no separation between thought and action. Murder is done and descent is rapid.

" It is something I have always wanted to do. I had a vision of Macbeth’s world and some of the cast in mind. It was the same with Dracula and The Odyssey. The choreographic language of Macbeth is very specific and detailed and I felt I had the right dancers at the right time in their careers to pursue this vocabulary. I do feel there is a time when you are ready to do a production and you can’t really contrive that."

Macbeth is on stage in Winchester on Wednesday and Thursday.

Call 01962 840440 or visit theatreroyalwinchester.co.uk