Something wicked this way comes - as Shakespeare meets the riots this month.

The Breakfast Cat Theatre Company is bringing Macbeth to life against the backdrop of the Croydon riots.

Roberto Prestoni, 35, is playing Macbeth and says the play is basically a mirror to the story - instead of Scottish soldiers there are hoodies.

King Duncan is a gang lord, Macbeth and Banquo are the top looters and the witches are three Croydon girls.

Prestoni, from Croydon, had a ringside seat in a pub as hooded youths circled on Surrey Street last August.

Making a break for it once the coast was clear, he made it back to his flat, only to find a looter from Brixton Hill had been shot dead by local looters right outside his kitchen window.

"The night was unruly, some say the Earth was feverous and did shake."

The director, Paul Grace who is also playing Banquo, said: "The themes of ambition, pride and jealousy are timeless, but the circumstances in which they manifest themselves through the play require a setting where normal laws and ethics are over-ridden.

"The unrest and riots in south London last year created a group that was separate from rational society, performing extreme actions fuelled by envy, frustration and rage.

"Our production imagines an unstable hierarchy within this dystopian society and provides the setting to bring Shakespeare’s most famous and dramatic text into a modern setting for a modern audience."

Macbeth, Charles Cryer Studio Theatre, 39 High Street Carshalton, 18-21 April, Eve 7.45pm, Sat Mat 2.45pm, £9/£7 concs, 0208 770 6990, suttontheatres.co.uk.