The Royal Ballet - Wayne McGregor's MaddAddam, ROH

Wayne McGregor's ambition is a little breathtaking. He combined three novels by Virginia Woolf with elements of her own life to create the impressive, deeply affecting three Act ballet Woolf Works; and then he tackled Italy's most precious medieval poem, Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy in his otherworldly The Dante Project.

And on The Royal Ballet resident choreographer goes. Now it's the turn of Margaret Atwood, the award-winning Canadian novelist, whose intricate dystopian, futuristic world McGregor brings to the stage in MaddAddam, a joint National Ballet of Canada/The Royal Ballet commission, which premiered in Toronto two years ago and has its UK premiere at the Royal Opera House this autumn.

In true McGregor fashion, MaddAddam is a very visual, monumental work where, with Margaret Atwood herself acting as creative consultant, a wide range of collaborators – composer Max Richter, lighting designer Lucy Carter, film designer Revi Deepres, dramaturg Uzma Hameed, and set designers We Not I, with fashion designer Gareth Pugh (whose work has been described as performance art) providing the costumes – come together to create a multifarious context for McGregor's own concept and choreography, in a piece that more than one Canadian critic found a little overwhelming.

MaddAddam is based on, but is not a literal adaptation of Atwood's post-apocalyptic trilogy Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). In very simple terms, the convoluted plot follows on from a plague engineered by the scientist Crake to rid the world of rotten humanity; various characters appear, both goodies, such as Jimmy and the mysterious Oryx, and baddies – Blanco and the two Paintballers. There is a cast of Crakers, gentle creatures bioengineered by Crake to replace humanity, and Pigoons, hybrids of human and pig created for organ harvesting.

As in the Canadian performances, so The Royal Ballet programme will contain a long piece by the dramaturg outlining the hugely complicated plot and the work's main themes of extinction and invention, hubris and humanity, love and loss; but still, unless you are very familiar with Atwood's novels, some passages are bound to appear a little abstruse. The visual element, though, is certain to prove a treat, and we know what to expect from McGregor's exuberant, highly athletic choreography. Ultimately, we're told, McGregor's MaddAddam is an exploration of life beyond societal collapse.

Two casts will alternate, with the first led by the Royal Ballet's newly-minted principal Joseph Sissens and the second by Marcelino Sambé, both tremendous dancers.