NEW Yorkshire company Well-fangled Theatre will mount a powerful, innovative take on Thomas Middleton's Jacobean revenge thriller, The Revenger's Tragedy, in their debut show in December.

"It will be an anarchic, shocking and visually stunning production," promises director Mark France, who is at the helm of his first play in York since Othello in 2012. "Violent, funny and in incredibly bad taste, Middleton’s darkly comic masterpiece presents a licentious, corrupt world in which an out-of-control ruling class must be held to account by a man who carries the skull of his dead girlfriend in his kit bag. Savage wit, Machiavellian intrigue and brutal violence combine in a play that is both thrillingly theatrical and a shockingly modern parable for our times."

France's production will be staged in a vibrant, decadent and licentious world not completely unlike contemporary London. "The play is set in a corrupt city where grotesque inequality and an erosion of civil society has allowed an unaccountable elite to treat the world around them as their playground, believing that normal rules don’t apply," he says.

"When I re-read the play a few months ago I found myself visualising a toxic brew of establishment figures, such as aristocratic politicians mixing with the new super-rich: Russian oligarchs, steel magnates and Chelsea reality television stars, all indulging in one endless party. The characters in the play behave without boundaries, in a way that seems completely detached from the rest of society, except when those less fortunate than themselves become either a threat or an object of fascination."

It was a natural decision, explains Mark, to stage an aggressively contemporary production that draws political parallels with Britain today in a vivid and thought-provoking way. "It won’t be exactly the same as contemporary London in a realistic sense, but rather a highly theatrical, nightmarish exaggeration of it,” he says The design will be by Simon Jarvis, with lighting by Kelli Zezulka and music composed by Kingsley Ash: the team responsible for both France's Othello in 2012 and Macbeth in 2011.

"Our cast features many actors who I've collaborated with frequently in the past, such as Jamie Smelt, Victoria Delaney, Gemma Head, Luke Broughton and Jonathan Bedford, along with well-known York faces Anjali Vyas-Brannick, Maurice Crichton and Paul Osborne," says Mark. "We're also using students from the University of York's Department of Theatre, Film and television in supporting roles, both on and offstage, including the emerging acting talent of Sam Hill and Hattie Patten-Chatfield."

The Revenger's Tragedy will run in the Black Box Studio, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York, from December 1 to 5 at 7.30pm plus a 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Please note: this revenge thriller is not suitable for under 16s on account of scenes of a sexual nature, violence and sexual violence. Tickets are available at £14, concessions £8, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk and on 01904 623568.