Tim Lenkiewicz’s Square Peg have recast and redeveloped the show which won the company a 2012 Bank of Scotland Herald Angel Award.

He says the aim was to hone its adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

“We listened to feedback from audiences and programmers and tweaked the storytelling and acrobatics and made it clearer, more exciting and tighter.”

Lenkiewicz reveals the 2012 show, which played at London’s Roundhouse Circus Festival and The National Theatre’s Watch This Space festival, had been limited by the cast, time and finance. Thus, before an extensive 2014 tour stopping in Worthing, he says, “we have made the show this year that we wanted to last year.”

The acrobatics – the human towers, Chinese poles, silks, flips, tight rope walks and tricks – are even more ambitious and more technical.

For the Chinese pole one performer goes into absolute freefall headfirst for six metres and stops inches from the ground.

Another performer walks the steel bar of the ship’s rigging like a tightrope while singing a sea shanty.

Two others climb to the top of the rigging, 10 metres in the air, to play a sea shanty on the accordion.

“It’s very exciting and dynamic and people are always gasping,” he adds.

“On social media people are always saying, ‘breathtaking, I couldn’t stand to watch it’.”

The company decided to tackle Coleridge’s epic poem after Square Peg associate director Thomas James suggested it.

Coleridge’s tale features a mariner recounting a tumultuous sea voyage to a wedding guest on route to a wedding celebration.

The mariner famously shoots an albatross – some say to feed his hungry sailors – and the men on the boat turn against him before they reconcile as the weather turns.

Not only did the nautical theme suit, with lots of rigging and masts for the performers to use, but at the time James was also due to get married.

“He started to imagine the albatross and the mariner could be seen as a metaphor for the bridegroom coming to terms with his forthcoming marriage.

“He gets together with someone, it’s great and he enjoys it, but then he pushes them away.”

In the poem the sailor has to repair the damage and come to terms with its effects.

“For Thomas he had met his girlfriend and fallen in love and everything was great. They got engaged, there was a push and pull, they wanted their own freedom, but also wanted to be together. Eventually he reconciled with it.”

Lenkiewicz is quick to point out all the acrobatics are in service of the story, that his collective of acrobats, dancers, actors and circus artists blend their backgrounds “to take circus into theatre”.

The Norse-inspired music works like a soundtrack.

“There is a new wave of Nordic music in Scandinavia and we have taken that as inspiration because of the Norse heritage of seafaring. It works like a soundtrack. It’s filmic. We use the sound to pinpoint where you are.”

Rime, Worthing Pavilion Theatre, Marine Parade, Worthing, Friday, August 8, to Sunday, August 10