MEASURE For Measure is already known as Shakespeare's problem play, but now there is another problem to add to this timeless tale of morality, intrigue and lust when Magnificent B***ard Productions visit the Great Yorkshire Fringe this weekend.

They will be presenting two previews of their all new Sh*t-faced Shakespeare take on a play full of indecent proposals, mistaken identities, cruel beheadings, frantic beddings, cross-dressing and undressing, plus a nun and a live birth, and one somewhat troublesome extra free spirit.

One cast member, be it Stacey Norris, Beth-Louise Priestley, Maryam Grace, Victoria Fitz-Gerald, Briony Rawle, director Lewis Ironside, David Ellis, Saul Marron or James Murfitt, will be genuinely drunk...and not from partaking in the Great Yorkshire Fringe's 6 of the Best Beer and Cider Festival, but from a carefully monitored programme of drinking, measure for measure for Measure For Measure.

"What we do is that everyone is a classically trained professional actor, and four hours before the performance one actor will be picked out of the hat to start drinking," says producer Stacey Norris. "The first time we did A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the Secret Garden Party, the show only lasted 15 minutes and that was that, but everyone pleaded to have another go and the second night 700 turned up because they'd heard – wrongly – that a girl had been killed through drinking too much. The fire brigade had to turn out to take people out of the tent as it was too busy."

From such a reckless start, Shi*tfaced Shakespeare's interactive, loose-cannon brand of theatre shows has become "a lot more controlled now" after 400 shows over seven years in the UK and USA as they "revive the raucous, interactive and vibrant nature of Elizabethan theatre with a very modern twist". That said, a new cast is in place. "We've just done our auditions for this run and the thing is you can't re-create in rehearsals how someone will be on stage when drunk," says Stacey. "What we can say is it's theatre with the three As: alcohol, adrenaline and the audience but no-one knows what will happen each night with those three As, when there's 45 minutes of script and around ten minutes for the drunk actor to do their thing."

Every actor will rehearse three roles and play them in rotation from a casting couch of Compere, Duke, Claudio, Angelo, Juliet, Lucio and Isabella. "They need to be strong Shakespeare actors but also great improvisers, who can fill the space with their physicality," says Stacey.

"A successful Sh*tfaced show will be a really good Shakespeare show and then you have someone on stage causing chaos with carte blanche to whatever they want to create that chaos in whatever way they can, while all the other actors have to work that into the show because they still have to get the whole play out in only an hour. What we're doing is taking Shakespeare back to what it would have been like in Shakespeare's time: bawdy, rowdy, and probably someone would have been drunk."

Getting each show's designated actor drunk is not merely a case of getting the actor drunk."Once we find each actor's successful route to inebriation, we each stick with it. I love a good vodka and coke, for example. You need the actor to be in that perfect, happy excitable drunk mode, so we watch them very carefully as alcohol can be a depressant," says Stacey. "And no, it's not a job for an alcoholic actor who thinks they're on to a freebie!"

The Great Yorkshire Fringe presents Sh*tfaced Skakespeare: Measure For Measure, The Turn Pot, Parliament Street, York, Saturday and Sunday, 8.30pm. Box office: 01904 500600 or at greatyorkshirefringe.com