THEATRE: Taking their act on the road: Middle-scale touring companies are all dressed up and hoping to go places. Georgina Brown reports

STEPHEN UNWIN caught a snatch of conversation the other day which ran like this: 'But will his Shakespeare have women in their underpants?' The reference was to his shocking and remarkable production of Manfred Karge's Man to Man in which Tilda Swinton wore Y-fronts stuffed with socks. If the questioner risks Unwin's A Midsummer Night's Dream, he will in fact find codpiece Shakespeare. Another shock of sorts.

The Dream is Unwin's first production for Century Theatre, a middle- scale touring company based in Crewe. In the past Century has concentrated its travelling in the North, but Unwin is steering it southwards with a speedy detour to Winchester and London. As Britain's oldest touring company, Century has had 40 years to build its reputation, yet few south of Wolverhampton have ever heard of it, despite the fact that Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins tramped along with it early in their careers. Unwin, who made a name for himself as a bit of a wunderkind at the Traverse and the Royal Court with a series of experimental and avant- garde German hits, is set to change all that. He is aspiring to join the ranks of such mid-scale tourers as the Cambridge Theatre Company, Oxford Stage Company and (a tad presumptuously, perhaps) the dazzlingly innovative Cheek By Jowl. Yet an unseasonal Dream in Elizabethan dress seems an odd, perhaps even a downright reactionary, way of going about it.

The Arts Council clearly doesn't think so - it has bumped up Century's grant by 26 per cent to more than pounds 400,000, giving it the much-sought after three-year funding that OSC has and CTC hopes for. And Unwin prefers to call this approach radical. 'It's very easily dismissed,' he says, close to pulling out the few remaining hairs on his head. 'Yes, it's Elizabethan dress, but that doesn't mean dusty, crude, TIE (Theatre in Education). But it's reactionary to say these plays are timeless. Old plays are old plays; Shakespeare is not our contemporary; he is a very good writer from another era. Peter Stein's Falstaff seemed to say 'I am a 20th-century artist doing a 19th-century opera based on a 16th- century play,' and all levels were visible. I want this to feel like a late 20th- century production of a play from 1594, which is also a great and popular work. And instead of denying that and saying it's actually all about sex, I'm saying embrace it.'

Arguably, forcing plays out of their period began as a fashion and became a cliche, and doing the old plays in the old-fashioned way can feel very fresh. 'Of course you have to interpret, but you must resist facile, narrow interpretation,' Unwin says. 'This is an ideal which I think is betrayed at the moment. The first scene of the Dream, for example, is stark, spoken. You could have lots of what I call 'shouting-acting', and Lysander playing with a Nintendo kit, but that's the way to get the audience bored. They'll be waiting for the Nintendo to come back and the verse just gets in the way. This Dream is for audiences who are saying what's the story, not how's the play being done.'

So far, Unwin's intuitive sense that there's an audience out there starved of Shakespeare served straight seems to have been spot on, in Crewe, Winchester and Blackpool. But then the Dream is at present on school syllabuses, a detail Unwin only noticed when the theatres filled with children. Still, full houses go a long way to make up for the discomforts of touring, to which Unwin is still acclimatising. So why did he take the job? 'I wanted to run a company. I wanted to choose our own work, do great plays in the appropriate context. I like the fact that Century comes out of the blue, but of course I want our work to be enjoyed and regarded.' Hence the London showcase.

The company's relaunch - complete with new name (not yet announced) - awaits Unwin's next production, Hamlet, with the fresh-faced Alan Cumming in the lead. Following that, Unwin hopes he can tempt his erstwhile collaborators Tilda Swinton and Simon Russell Beale, which would be one in the eye for the blindingly starry Renaissance Theatre. He's confident, gung-ho even, like fellow travellers and artistic directors Mike Alfreds of CTC and John Retallack of OSC. While all around them companies are belly-aching over the Arts Council's dismal performance, the middle-scale tourers are giving it a rare round of applause for allowing them to transform their repertoires. Their efforts to encourage an audience willing to be disturbed and provoked as well as entertained are at last paying off.

'Someone else can do Charley's Aunt and Ayckbourn. We want to attract a younger, more alert audience,' Mike Alfreds says. Little by little, CTC is taking on the colours of his former company, Shared Experience, acclaimed for its bold physicality. One out of four productions is a new work, and he is beginning to adapt novels and films for the stage, kicking off with Les Enfants du Paradis in collaboration with the mime David Glass. Meanwhile John Retallack of OSC does at least one Shakespeare and one children's play a year.

Quite independently the companies' have found their own routes, artistic and geographical, which, by chance, have proved complementary; naturally there's rivalry, but it tends to be friendly as a result of the shared experience. Together, these companies contribute the 'serious' work to a provincial theatre's season otherwise filled with commercial tat. It's their joint responsibility to cultivate an audience with what Mike Alfreds calls 'the vocabulary to enjoy this quality work. Most people's entertainment is telly, which doesn't involve you, and audiences detach themselves when things get too emotional. Theatre is much less manipulative. I want to liberate them to make a show go on in their heads, and let them decide what it's about. Usually directors and actors can hide from the audience, but when you're touring you've got to get out and get in contact with them - that's a rare and pleasurable thing.'

'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Lilian Baylis, EC1. Details and ticket offer in Previews and First Nights, below.

(Photograph omitted)