With I, Caliban he conjured Prospero's slave for a new take on The Tempest. With I, Peaseblossom he retold A Midsummer Night's Dream through the visions of Shakespeare's most neglected fairy.

Now, in another beguiling new perspective on the Bard, Brighton's Tim Crouch is debuting I, Banquo, taking a haunted look at Macbeth through the eyes of his best friend.

Performed in "blood and heavy metal", I, Banquo once again sees Crouch team up with Graeme Gilmour, the co-designer of gothic musical Shockheaded Peter.

But the heart of Crouch's productions - one-man miracles of invention - is always his gift for enthralling storytelling.

"The idea was to have portable Shakespeare - Shakespeare in a suitcase you could bring to schools," says the Festival's Pippa Smith, who commissioned the series. "We want to do work that challenges children and is on the edge."

Crouch's refusal to dilute Shakespeare's emotional world or patronise his audience led to controversy last year when one school took exception to Peaseblossom's raunchy innuendo. But for many, the clowning of a six-foot fairy was as good an introduction to Shakespeare as you could imagine.

There is, anyhow, little scope for lurve in Macbeth. A group of witches prophesy that, although Macbeth will become king, it is Banquo's heir who will succeed him as King of Scotland.

And once Macbeth has done away with King Duncan, his buddy soon becomes the target of his tyrannical paranoia.

In the hands of Crouch, Banquo's ghost should prove a very welcome guest.

Bella Todd