The new show is a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland and features the company’s biggest ever cast of eight actors — including aerial artist Jennifer Paterson — and two musicians.

It is a project Gill Robertson, the founder and artistic director of Catherine Wheels, has nurtured in her mind for some time.

“My husband was a huge fan of the book and I also fell in love with both the story and the language when I first read it in my 20s,” she said.

“Although it is quite dark and often poetic, I felt it would make a great family show because you have the two boys and a rite of passage story at its heart. At the same time you have the father going through his own crisis, so there is something there for children and adults.

“It is not only our biggest cast so far but also has a greater range of elements within it than anything we have done before. We have an aerial artist, a filmmaker, a choreographer and an aerial choreographer all involved. It’s quite an ambitious story to put on stage with lots of things going on, and I was aware that we needed all of those skills.”

The book takes its title from a line spoken by one of the witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and tells the story of two boys who become involved with Mr Dark’s mysterious and evil carnival that arrives in their small American town. It is a classic good-versus-evil battle played out on designer Karen Tennant’s adaptable stage set.

“It is an exciting story with a lot going on,” Robertson said. “I think the stage version tries to make it as straightforward as possible by concentrating mainly on the thriller aspects of the story. We have edited it a bit as well to help that process.

“The set is very important and I spent a lot of time working with Karen on getting that space right.

“When you first look at it, it is very evocative of that small town America look. That transforms in turn into the carnival setting.

“It is very versatile and we needed to have a good platform for Jennifer Paterson, our aerial artist. I wanted the aerial work to be an integral part of the production, just as the character she plays is integral to the show.”

Paterson echoed that last observation when I asked her how she had gone about tackling her role as the sinister Dust Witch, complete with sewn-up eyes and mouth.

“It’s really down to using the aerial work as part of the Dust Witch’s character,” she said. “We looked at what the set and the rigging would allow us to do then focused on what the character is all about and what the story itself is all about.

“I’m having to use a lot of voice and the movements are dictated by the Dust Witch’s role within the given scene. It’s much more about overall theatre than just movement. It’s a good challenge to have to use both physical and acting skills and I’m really enjoying it.”

Paterson is originally from Stirling and now lives in Edinburgh. She trained as a dancer before moving into aerial work and has performed in the past with several companies based in this area — including Arts in Motion and Tartan Chameleon as an aerial artist, and with plan B as a dancer.

She is working in this show with another aerial specialist, Jonothan  Campbell, familiar to local audiences from his plays “The Ballad” and “Sealskin Trousers”.

Andrew Clark is just one of the menacing characters who appear in 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'.

“Jonothan is the aerial choreographer on the show. He is on the other end of the line — if he goes up the ladder I go down,” Paterson said.

“In fact, it’s a bit like dancing a duet with Jonothan. Our timings and co-ordination have to be spot-on and it takes a while to get that right — my shin pads were always in place early on.

“I definitely see aerial work as an extension of my dance training — it has been very beneficial to have the body awareness and knowledge I brought over from dancing.

“It is still very physical and a lot of the skills you have in dance are useful to take up into the air. But aerial work also requires more strength — and a head for heights.”

Bradbury, an award-winning American science fiction and fantasy author, originally wrote the novel — based on a short story he had written some years earlier — after a proposed film project with his friend Gene Kelly as director fell through for lack of funding in the mid-1950s.

It was published in novel form in 1962 and is related to two other books, “Dandelion Wine” and “Farewell Summer”, set in the same fictional location of Green Town.

Bradbury later adapted the book as a film for Walt Disney in 1983 and subsequently as a stage play for his own Pandemonium Theatre Company, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2003. Robertson suggests their own production is suitable for ages nine and over.

“I think they will be able to cope with it.

“We have done some previews and it has had a very positive response,” she said.

“The novel is quite dark, and we didn’t want to lose that element.

“In the book Charles Halloway, the father of one the boys, is a great philosopher about life and the nature of good and evil, and we have edited that down a bit — but it is still there. My main aim was just to create a really good exciting night of theatre.”

* “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is at the Empire Theatre, Eden Court, tomorrow.

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