"Macbeth is a lot like Oedipus. We always think the dramatic action is off-stage, whereas in fact the dramatic action is the realisation of what he has done.”

So says Cheek By Jowl’s artistic director Declan Donnellan about the company’s new version of Shakespeare’s classic, whose name alone strikes fear into many a thespian.

This tour is coming to Brighton Festival 2010 having previously been performed across Europe and at London’s Barbican Centre.

A striking feature of the show is its stark staging, eschewing props, sets and even the witches to create a dark atmosphere and make the audience work to get the best out of the show.

“The audience has to sit forward and use its imagination,” says Declan. “They become part of the deed.

“The show is very much about atmosphere. There are a lot of ghosts and spectres in the story, but the most frightening spirits are the ones in our own mind. We have spent a lot of time creating scary effects for the witches and ghosts, which are all the more scary because the audience has to create the images.”

When discussing Macbeth, it is normally assumed to be a story about the murder of a king. But for Declan, the murder is merely the preamble to the real story.

“It is about realising what we have done and taking responsibility for our actions,” he says. “By the end of Macbeth, the two main characters have to come to terms with this terrible thing.

“It is an un-tabloid view of a criminal act. It doesn’t whitewash what they have done, but it asks us for one second to imagine what it would be like to wake up and realise that we had done something truly terrible – showing us what it feels like from the inside.

“They both slowly come to some realisation of what they have done in those last final moments.”

The Cheek By Jowl method of approaching a play is to focus on the text and work with the actors’ imaginations to create the best possible staging.

“The audience and the actors meet together in their imaginations,” says Declan. “They make up the imaginative identity between them – when somebody on stage says ‘I’m doing this’ it’s up to the audience to suspend their disbelief and follow them. That’s what creates a great theatrical moment.”

Cheek By Jowl’s first encounter with Macbeth was in 1986, when they were asked to perform it by the Finnish National Theatre.

“What attracted me was the wonderful relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth,” says Declan.

Since then Cheek By Jowl has expanded its operations abroad, and for the past 12 years has been working with actors in Moscow on films and Russian- language stage versions of Twelfth Night, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Pushkin’s Boris Gudunov.

At the same time the company has produced work in the UK, including Troilus And Cressida, Cymbeline, and Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling over the past five years.

The two worlds may possibly come together in the future as Declan has plans to bring a Russian version of The Tempest to the UK.

7.30pm, Sat matinee at 2.30pm, tickets from £12.50. Call 01273 709709.