Oscar-nominated actor John Malkovich will be seen portraying the role of real life Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger on stage in London next year.

Unterweger was convicted of murdering a string of prostitutes in Austria and the US between 1974 and 1992 before committing suicide in prison in 1994.

Director Graham Sheffield revealed that Malkovich's one-man play 'The Infernal Comedy', in which he is backed by a Baroque orchestra and chorus, was also 'curiously similar' to the story of Josef Fritzl, who locked his daughter in a makeshift prison.

'We're not afraid to tackle work that deals with the issues of the day,' telegraph.co.uk quoted him as saying.

'Part of the reason I picked it - it's not a great, fun evening in the sense of going to see 'In The Loop' or something - was the issue of how people like that, monsters like that, can get away with crimes like that.

'Part of the reason we put on something like that is it has a pretty shocking relevance to some of things going on in society,' he added.