Preview: The Changeling, Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham

The theatre director Stephen Unwin, who snapped up Alan Cumming, Sam West, Tilda Swinton and Patterson Joseph before they became famous, has now discovered the actress Anna Koval. He has cast the 21-year-old actress, fresh out of Rada, in the lead role as Beatrice-Joanna, in the dark Jacobean tragedy The Changeling.

This lust-charged play, bursting with depraved sex and violence, involves a tangled web of love between the beautiful Beatrice-Joanna, the man she loves, Alsemero, and a deformed servant, De Flores. This servant kills the man she was supposed to marry, Alonzo de Piracquo, as a favour, and then blackmails her into sleeping with him. The pair, overtaken by lust, lunacy and murder, finally end up stabbing each other.

"It is a beauty and the beast story; two opposites attract. Sex is this phenomenally powerful force that causes chaos. For a part like Beatrice-Joanna you need youth and sex appeal," says Unwin. "The challenge is to make sure that the sex and the violence is neither ludicrous nor over explicit. The writing is so physiologically rich that it's the writing that's your best friend in all this."

This production is part of Unwin's final year as director at the English Touring Company (ETT). He founded the company in 1993 and has since directed most of the company's productions: King Lear with Timothy West at the Old Vic, Hedda Gabler with Alex Gilbreath at the Donmar, and Hamlet with Alan Cumming at the Donmar and Ed Stoppard in the West End.

Other ETT world premieres have included Hushabye Mountain by Jonathan Harvey, The York Realist by Peter Gill.

"There wasn't enough serious quality theatre touring the country when I started doing it and we filled that gap. The danger is that touring work has since become commercial tat. I passionately believe that we must stand up for the touring of quality productions around the country, despite the challenge of pulling it off," says Unwin.

To 13 October (0115-941 9419), then touring to 1 December (www.ett.org.uk)