STRANGE places lurk in the mind of Natasha Hodgson.

The former Croft Primary School pupil creates bizarre, vivid and sometimes scary worlds in her theatre productions where she is fascinated with the oddities and eccentricities of the characters that live within them.

She has been that way since playing Aiken Drum, a man with a bacon jacket and spaghetti hair, for a school play when she was five.

Her mum wanted her to be a banker but Natasha always thrived on stage.

Now the 29-year-old is presenting Don’t Wake The Damp at The Lowry in Salford Quays in time for Halloween.

The neon monster comedy was created by Kill The Beast, an award-winning theatre company consisting of Natasha, Clem Garritty, Zoe Roberts, David Cummings and Oliver Jones, who all met at Warwick University.

And another suitably weird and wonderful world has been created for the story, set in 2035.

Natasha plays the lead role of June, an old woman who refuses to leave her home when the council wants to demolish it.

There is damp in the building that has a life of its own and wants to rise and kill everyone.

But June, along with a couple of other residents from the building, vow to stay and fight as secrets from her youth when she played a 'sexy cyborg' in a TV show begin to emerge.

"It’s a sort of monster adventure comedy so there’s a few spooks and scares but mostly it’s a big silly comedy," said Natasha, who grew up in Croft and Golborne.

"So it’s perfect for people looking for an enjoyable night out with a Halloween edge.

"It’s not a frightening show but there are elements of pastiche of horror that people will recognise from films of the 80s.

"It’s perfect for anyone who grew up aware of Doctor Who and Power Rangers and all those silly schlocky sci-fi shows.

"We also distil a bit of pixelated magic from the era of Sega Mega Games into a slightly dystopian, exaggerated future."

Combining dark comedy and physical theatre, Don't Wake The Damp will also see numerous pop culture nods crammed into the show.

"We’re huge film and TV aficionados so we get our inspiration by watching a lot of things in the genre we want to work in," added Natasha.

"For this one we watched Eraserhead, Tron, The Thing, The Fly, old Doctor Who and Power Rangers episodes and cartoons like Pokémon, He-Man and ThunderCats episodes.

"Those 80s kids’ shows had amazing shredded guitar theme tunes which you don’t really get anymore.

"So we wanted the feel of that with the dystopian tone of 80s horror. We wanted to bash those things to together to create an original monster story but set in the future."

To say Don't Wake The Damp is out of the ordinary is probably an understatement but the production has been warmly welcomed.

"We took it to Edinburgh Festival and we got a lot of lovely reviews and won a stage award," added Natasha.

"That made us really proud. It’s such a silly romp and adventure so it’s nice to be recognised.

"Sometimes it’s perceived that good theatre has to always to be about pertinent issues and dealing with important themes.

"But I think it’s nice to step back occasionally and realise you can create something which is just very entertaining and still has imagination and a lot of interesting elements like music and projection. We worked very hard on the technical elements."

Kill The Beast formed in 2012 and Don't Wake The Damp is their third production after The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, an adaptation of the Tom Baker novel, and He Had Hairy Hands, a detective werewolf spoof.

Natasha said she enjoys treading the line between comedy and horror in her work.

She said: "Comedy and horror are very similar in that it is all about tension and release.

"It’s all about building something up and then you release it with a scare or you release it with a punchline and everyone exhales or everyone laughs.

"So I think there is a lot of similarity between those two things and it’s been a really interesting process trying to unravel the differences."

Natasha also said it was being given opportunities at Croft Primary that made this all possible.

She added: "Luckily my schools had lots of capacity for being in school plays and exploring that side of myself

Then I went to university in Warwick and that also had lots of different societies.

"I tried devising and writing musicals and straight plays and gradually it became very clear that’s what I wanted to do with my life.

"My mum was disappointed that I wasn’t going to become a banker. She tried her best but I think she’s now come to accept that I’m probably always going to be a terrible, creative luvvie."

- Don't Wake The Damp is at The Lowry until Saturday. Visit thelowry.com