Writer David Greig has penned a sequel to Shakespeare’s story of Macbeth.

Writer David Greig was watching a production of Macbeth when it set him thinking – what happens afterwards?

Macbeth has been overthrown, the English have arrived, Malcolm is safely on the throne, but is that really the end of the story?

Not for David, who penned the play Dunsinane, which comes to The Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon next week, in response.

“It was 2003 and I was watching this play which was all about toppling a dictator and I thought ‘but would that really be the end of it?’ he recalls.

“And then I was also watching the play in Scotland and these names, Dunsinane, Burnham Wood etcetera were very real places and I thought about the fact that these English soldiers had come to Scotland, which was a foreign country to them, and how they would respond to that.”

David knew he had the germ of an idea but it was only after discussions with the Royal Shakespeare Company that he developed them into the play.

Dunsinane was presented by the RSC in London last year and Scotland this spring. It tells the tale of the English commander Siward and his soldiers as they try to provide a peace-keeping force to a troubled land, taking the story on from where Shakespeare’s drama leaves it.

David admits there are obvious echoes in the present day.

“When I was writing it the parallel was Iraq,” he says. “But sadly I don’t think there will ever be a time when it isn’t relevant to something that is happening somewhere in the world.

“Now the parallel that comes to mind is more likely to be Afghanistan or even Libya.

“The play is really trying to explain that impulse to intervene and to do good but how it then proves to be not so easy. It looks at the dysfunction of how easy it is to go to war and how difficult it is to then get out of it.

“Siward and the English arrive in Scotland, defeat Macbeth and think that is the end of their intervention. But they discover nothing is as simple or as black and white as they thought. Instead of being able to just head back to England they come across a complex situation of clans and families and rights and wrongs – what they discover is actually a minefield.”

Greig admits than when he first began the play it was set against a desert backdrop in the present day but he then realised that actually taking it back to the time of Macbeth was more effective.

“The trick is to let the audience make the parallels,” he says. “I had this image of an English soldier stepping off the boat at the shoreline in Scotland and looking ahead. This is his first step of the mission.”

After a number of initial drafts David then returned to Shakespeare’s play for details – but he has also changed a good deal of the story, not least by keeping Lady Macbeth alive in the new guise of Queen Gruach.

“Every schoolchild in Scotland knows that the real Macbeth was actually not a bad king,” says David.

“Macbeth’s reign did start with a murder and there was a battle of Dunsinane but actually Macbeth ruled for 15 years and probably wasn’t a tyrant at all. The fact is that Lady Macbeth also outlived him and she died a peaceful death.

“So when I went back to the story I decided to keep Lady Macbeth alive and her very existence is one of the situations that Siward has to deal with.”

David, a born Scot, was brought up in Nigeria before moving back to Scotland in his teens. He now makes his home in Edinburgh – and he has been surprised by the response to Dunsinane in his native land.

“The play has had really good responses everywhere but what has surprised me is how differently the audiences have responded.

‘‘When it was performed in London, Afghanistan was very much to the fore and people could see those parallels and saw Siward as a typically British figure, a kind of Tony Blair or Englishman abroad, who is trying to calm the natives. There is a kind of sympathy for that figure.

“When it opened in Scotland it was just after Scotland had voted overwhelmingly for independence and the audience was really responding to it as a Scottish play. Suddenly they were on the side of the Queen.

“Where in London the play was all about Afghanistan, here it was all about Scotland. It was extraordinary. The Afghanistan parallels were still there but they had settled into the background.

“Also in Scotland, people found it really funny. There is humour written into it and that was recognised in London but here people responded to the humour a lot more.

“It will be really interesting to see the play in Stratford. There it is set within the context of Shakespeare and is being watched by an audience which is largely familiar with Shakespeare so I am really interested to see how they respond to it.

‘‘I am looking forward to it but I am also a bit nervous.”

Directed by Roxana Silbert, who has just been named as the new artistic director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland production is being performed in a repertory season which also includes Michael Boyd’s new Macbeth in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

David hopes that audiences will take the time to watch both.

“Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and I would never try to make a comparison,” he says.

“But I hope that people will see both plays and that they will complement each other, a bit like dinner and dessert.”

* Dunsinane, The Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
June 15-July 2
Tickets 0844 800 1110, www.rsc.org.uk