DID you know that  Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange” is now a stage play, and that it’s coming to Canberra in May 2013? 

The show, staged by the company Action to the Word  and starring actor Martin McCreadie as Alex, will fly  to Australia direct from the UK, where it’s been getting stunning  reviews in the 50th anniversary year of the book’s original release.

Described as  “a testosterone-fuelled, electrifying theatrical adaptation” of the notorious novel, adapted by Stanley Kubrick into cult film in 1971, it follows the lives of  Alex and his “Droogs” in their battle against adolescence via violence and sex.

The show mirrors society past-and-present and the human condition through the nastiness of Manchester’s underworld.

The production heightens the atmosphere of menace with a soundtrack of works by including David Bowie, Gossip, The Scissor Sisters, Placebo, Frankie Goes to Hollywood,  Pink Floyd and  Beethoven.

Burgess’s original “A Clockwork Orange” was written and narrated in Nadsat,  an Anglo-Russian concoction of colloquialisms that are used by the so-called “youth of tomorrow”.

Alex ends up as part of the “Ludovico” experiment that claims to decriminalise convicts in two weeks through drastic psychological conditioning.

You’ll just have to see what happens as an orgy of violence turns into a comment on the dangers of having our independence robbed.

The  company Action to the Word was formed in 2008 to create new and exciting theatre for a wider audience. Artistic Director Alexandra Spencer-Jones says “In the wake of the London riots, A Clockwork Orange has a new power of its own, asking once again, ‘Is it better to be forced to be good or better to choose to be bad?’”

At Canberra Theatre Centre, bookings to 6275 2700 or  www.canberratheatrecentre.com.au