It’s a long while since I witnessed an ovation of such magnitude. Why was the audience standing? Sheer admiration!

Theresa Heskins and Vicki Dela Amedume already have a substantial track record as co-directors of sublimely innovative work on the round stage at the New Vic - a marriage between Theresa’s impressive theatrical career and Vicki circus acumen. This new production caps the lot.

The base line is Angela Carter’s radio version of Little Red Riding Hood 'The Company of Wolves' in which the wolves are of the ‘were’ variety. It was a slight script, wrapping up a number of wolf stories, which became a successful film a few years later and is now developed into a fabulous stage presentation a few decades later.

The stage is populated by a number of tall slender Chinese poles. For whilst the humans tread the solid earth, the unworldly wolves have mastery of the air - scampering up and down like dancing demons, performing stunning aerial acrobatics.

This they do to a cage of surround sound. Some of it is human - the actors intoning sinister soliloquies around the theatre, counter-pointing the natural chatter on stage, but much of it is James Atherton’s tense driving Bladerunner-style music (complete with guttural animal grunts), and sound designer Alex Day’s immaculate special effects.

In a modern moment, little ‘Red’ produces a knife. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she says. “I have a knife” and we hear it ring coldly right round the arena. Later when she has cause to throw the wolf’s clothing into the fire, that pivotal moment in the plot is portrayed brilliantly with all-consuming sound.

(I didn’t know this but if you burn a werewolf’s clothing he can no longer return to human form - not a piece of information you need on a daily basis).

Wolf law runs through the production. The most grounded character is Lorna Laidlaw’s Granny who - in a homely sort of way - warns young ‘Red’ to stick to the path when she walks through the woods, never marry a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle, and beware of a man with a wolf’s heart. All good grandparental advice.

It also catapults us to the spectacular, supernatural ‘red in tooth and claw’ conclusion of the story when wily ‘Red’ uses the knowledge that ‘wolves are tender to their own’ to shape her own unexpected destiny.

Danielle Bird (with her new dark red hair) is perfect as the heroine. An innocent, coquettish girl at first, when she dons the red riding hood cloak Grandma has knitted for her, she also dons the awareness of adulthood. She goes from being a little girl to a woman who can outsmart bestiality. As an actress/acrobat, her aerial lovemaking duet with the amazingly powerful Sebastian Charles (as the ‘gentleman’), wrapped high above the stage in flowing red banners, is simply breathtaking.

This fairy tale is not for children. It’s set at “a time when things don’t fit well together, a savage time of the year”. A nightmare time. A time that speaks to the beast in all of us. So cosy, it is not! But, my word, it is a most stunning, compelling and impressive piece of performance art. And it thoroughly deserved it’s standing ovation.

Five stars

Reviewed by Chris Eldon Lee at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, on Tuesday 24 September. The Company of Wolves continues to show at the venue untll Saturday 12 October.