Malkin Tower: Twelfth Night, Victoria Baths, Manchester, 1-5 May

For its debut production, new Northwest theatre company Malkin Tower reimagines Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night in the stunning Edwardian architecture of South Manchester's Victoria Baths. Translated to the 19th century, this jolly romp featuring a shipwreck, cross-dressing and a pompous servant follows Viola as she navigates her way through a strange wonderland – but the play is not all knockabout laughs, and explores the unsettling crossover between love and madness.

With its emerald tiling, vivid stained glass and elaborate Turkish baths, the venue is a palace for water, but does not lend itself to the task of staging theatre. “The biggest challenges have come from the building itself,” says the company's founder and the production's director, Anna Marsland. “Where do the audience sit? How will we light the production when the roof is made of glass? Where are the dressing rooms?”

Marsland's team have approached these challenges by embracing the Baths' Edwardian heritage as inspiration for the staging. “The building really is at the heart of the production,” she says. Traditional songs from Manchester's music halls and pubs are incorporated in the drama, and composer Oliver Mawdsley has written music based on old Lancashire folk songs.

Marsland's interest in drama began at Burnley Youth Theatre, where she directed a production of Alice in Wonderland. After staging student productions as an undergraduate, she went on to study theatre directing at London's Birkbeck College, also spending a year as a trainee director for Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. Her background in fantastical theatre is appropriate to the ethos of the young Malkin Tower company, which, interested in storytelling and magic, takes its name from the home of two of the infamous and alleged Pendle witches. The company is already developing its next project: a play exploring the relationship between pre-Raphaelite all-rounder Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his muse-turned-wife Elizabeth ('Lizzie') Siddal. Titled Eat Me, it's partly based on a narrative poem by Rossetti's sister Christina, Goblin Market. [Jacky Hall]