CHRISTMAS shows in Newcastle from Northern Stage's Neil Murray have become an eagerly-awaited festive tradition over the past decade. So seeing the designer and director's name attached to a new version of Beauty And The Beast, you could be excused for thinking that the festive season has come early this year.

Warning labels that "this production contains nudity" and "recommended for 16-plus" indicates this is most definitely not the case.

The Tiger's Bride - as this adaptation of an Angela Carter short story is called - is a darker, adult telling of the familiar fantasy in which an innocent girl falls in love with a beast turned into a handsome prince by a kiss.

"I've loved doing the Christmas shows and believe in them strongly," he says. "I've always been fascinated by an adult version of Beauty And the Beast, because it is about very adult concerns."

He was looking for a show for Northern Stage Ensemble's spring slot in the Gulbenkian when he came across Carter's The Bloody Chamber with re-workings of fables. One was The Tiger's Bride.

"She writes in a very visual way, painting a very clear picture," explains Warkworth-born Murray, who trained as a fine artist at Newcastle University.

A script was commissioned from Margaret Wilkinson, an American novelist and short story writer, who teaches creative writing at Northumbria University.

"We've adapted the thing together and she's done a huge amount of terrific work on the actual text. Angela Carter's work is very difficult to do anything with. Although it's very well formed and beautifully written, it's quite hard to abstract bits," explains Murray.

"Margaret has written a background story about the girl and her father arriving from Russia, because he's a gambler who's lost everything. Margaret became interested in who this girl was and what they had left behind."

That story has been recorded as a soundtrack by Cait Davis, an actress from Northern Stage's last production 1984, and will be heard throughout the production. "We use her voice and a lot of music," he explains. "This gives us the freedom to do what we like on the stage, so it becomes a physical and visual telling of the story through film, music and movement."

The production has been devised during rehearsal by Murray in conjunction with the four-strong company (Rebecca Hollingsworth, Francisco Alfonsin, Alex Elliott and Tony Neilsen), choreographer and film-makers.

"Rehearsals are all about creating together," says Murray. "I love the idea of us all collaborating and deconstructing, then reconstructing over and over again. It's very much a question of refining. The good thing about the Ensemble is that it's been together for a long period of time, so we know each other very well. It's straight in there. Everyone is focused on the work."

Foot-and-mouth restrictions robbed those making film inserts for the show of stately home locations already lined up. Filming was eventually carried out in a house used as an old people's home.

The feminist undertone to Carter's story has not been removed but Murray says it's not an issue or the reason he chose the story. "I've worked on fables a lot and they tend to have a central male or female, at an age where they are taking the difficult step from childhood and teenage years to adulthood - when sex rears its ugly head. That's the territory it's dealing with.

"The Tiger's Bride is clearly an erotic piece of writing and feminist in its thrust. In this the beast is a tiger, an animal noted for its sexuality. And the ending is different to Beauty And The Beast."

That fable is among those titles used for Murray's Christmas shows along with The Sleeping Beauty, Grimm Tales and More Grimm Tales. Despite the adult nature of The Tiger's Bride, he sees no difference between staging that and the children-orientated shows.

"I like doing work for young people and always care massively about the end product of the Christmas shows, because they are our future audience. Working for young people is very satisfying because they don't stand any nonsense at all. You can't offer them rubbish because they won't take it," he says.

His art background and dual role as designer-director means people assume he's "obsessed" by the visual. Not true, he says: "If I was, I would be in film. The reason I work in theatre is the people bit, which has nothing to do with visuals at all.

"I would fight hard to have a writer, choreographer and so on, as they are all key voices. Theatre is about collaboration and creating this thing together. It's not about the director sitting at one end of the room yelling."

* The Tiger's Bride is at the Gulbenkian Studio Theatre, Newcastle, until June 2. Tickets 0191 230 5151.