THE great Old English epic poem of Beowulf gets a remarkable new look when the award-winning circus company Nikki & JD and dance-theatre company Lost Dog strip the story back to its physical essentials in Fireside, an open air circus, dance and theatre performance with fire and live music, on the Pavilion field at Gillingham School on Tuesday 21st October from 6pm.

Gather around the fire and remember what it was to be afraid of the dark … Don’t build the fire too high, sing too loud or laugh too heartily, because he’s out there and he’s hungry.

This is the original horror story, the one about the monster, and the monster’s mother, and the dragon and the hero and the severed limbs. Dark, comic and physically dangerous, this is a remarkable modern re-telling of an ancient tale.

• Beowulf is an epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legends, one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The best-known and most acclaimed is a verse translation by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Other translators included William Morris, best known as a designer, the Victorian author Thomas Arnold and JRR Tolkien. The only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between AD 975 and 1025.

The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 5th and 6th centuries. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for 12 years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel’s mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.