Ask people what their favourite William Shakespeare work is and more often than not you will get answers such as Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth, but not from Gerard Logan.

The actor prefers instead to lavish praise on one of the great bard's poems, The Rape of Lucrece, which he will be performing as a one-man play at Croydon Clocktower next Wednesday.

“For me it is the best thing ever written by Shakespeare,” says Logan, once nominated for Olivier award.

“Nothing else shows how far ahead of his time he was as this does.

“That he, at the age of 30, could have an appreciation of the dreadfulness and appallingness of the act of rape better than the 20th century legal system and arguably the 21st century legal system is amazing.

“He wrote this at a time when women were really just considered to be appendages of men and her reaction to being raped definitely shows some 20th century thinking.”

The narrative poem was written in 1594 about the legendary Lecretia and was a follow up to Venus and Adonis, after which Shakespeare had promised a much graver work.

“It is very gothic and intense,” says Logan.

“Somebody said to me last week it was like attending a séance.

“It's a very harrowing tale but only in the same way Macbeth is harrowing about murder.

“It shows the dreadfulness of rape and the effect on the victim and the purpose who does it.”

The Rape of Lucrece, Croydon Clocktower, Katharine Street, May 19, 7.30pm, £8. Call 020 8253 1030 or visit croydonclocktower.org.uk.