A dizzying, kaleidoscopic blend of theatre, video, live action, it defied definition in many ways, but it was a technical and artistically impressive feat. Since then the company has brought to the stage, with similar success, Dracula. It was also tasked last year with unveiling the new collection of a leading Parisian fashion house in its own style which is best described, ironic given the name of the company, as inimitable.

When asked about this last few years and the possible explanation for the company’s seemingly sudden explosion into the mainstream, Pete Brooks says, with typical understatement: “People do trust us a bit more.” Andrew Quick adds: “And we trust ourselves.” Brooks and Quick, along with Simon Wainwright, are the three artistic directors of the company.

This trust they have earned in themselves and their work is about to be put to use when they bring Macbeth to the stage. For the newly initiated, it might seem strange to go from zombies, the lord of the undead to Shakespeare.

Laura Atherton, Maia Tamrakar, Benjamin Westerby and Stefan Chanyaem in rehearsal for Macbeth. Picture: Ed Waring.

“It’s relevant to know that we’ve done Shakespeare before; we staged an adaptation of King Lear in Chile and doing it there, in Spanish, gave us freedom from the classical traditional Shakespeare," says Quick.

“We cut it and moved the text around and combined characters and that sort of thing – which was a very good exercise for our approach to Macbeth. Some of the things we’ve done are for purely pragmatic reasons: we have five performers, three witches who also play all the other characters and two actors as the Macbeths, they are a constant couple. Once you have that, it gives you a way into the play and how you are going to adapt it and what you can do with it. In many ways it’s just like the original in that the witches set up the world, the narrative and instigate the trail of ambition and possibility in Macbeth, in our version we have reallocated a lot of Banquo’s lines, so Lady Macbeth is there when the encounter with the witches takes place.

“We’ve maintained a lot of the original dialogue and soliloquies that the Macbeths have, but we’ve been quite free around the framing structure. Our witches are narrators, tricksters who talk and comment on the action as it emerges. In our version the witch tricksters set up the world, and the Macbeths are lost in the world they create. Our witches talk to the audience, commentate, they banter, they speak all the other Shakespearean parts as we have cut and reordered it.”

Interestingly, this Macbeth, intriguing as it sounds, was something we almost didn’t see. “We had been thinking of Romeo and Juliet and we had a clear idea for it, but we did a bit of R and D on it and the show just didn’t work that way we had in our heads, so we started to think about other titles. Fortunately, we had already been thinking about Macbeth. It was about a year ago we realised we should make the switch and began working on this Macbeth.”

Benjamin Westerby (Macbeth) in rehearsal for Imitating the Dog's new production of Macbeth. Picture: Ed Waring.

The luxury to work in this way is a result, the pair say, of becoming a National Portfolio Organisation, an NPO, which means a commitment from the Arts Council to the company and its work. Does it explain the pushing at the boundaries the company has been doing of late?

“It’s not really a choice,” says Quick. “We’ve talked about this a lot, you either do it like everybody else has done, there’s the approach where you modernise but still do it as is or mash it up and remix it which I think is the way we are trying to do it and you just must be confident.”

Brooks adds: “We’re enthusiasts, we’re not doing it because we’ve got to, we’re doing shows because we want to, and we’re really excited by. The other thing is the world we are operating in is viciously based around market forces, if we make work that nobody wants to see, we will stop making work quickly and our judgement has been pretty good, I think, so far. We make work that is challenging, but fun and work that we want to see. And we’re having a lot of fun with this project. We want to bring in young audiences, if we don’t do that, there’s no future for theatre.”

Macbeth is at Cast, Doncaster, February 21 & 22, Harrogate Theatre, February 24 & 25 and at The Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, May 3-6.

Imitating the Dog's exciting new production of Macbeth