Love story with a vicious edge

Malvolio is not the romantic hero of Twelfth Night. He's the butler, and when he attempts to make love to Olivia, his noble mistress, a whipping is his reward.

In The Dog and the Manger, Teodoro is secretary to Diana, the Countess of Belflor. He loves her. And she loves him back. That cross-class passion is just one of the many remarkable things about Laurence Boswell's RSC production of Lope de Vega's 17th century tragicomedy.

Joseph Millson's Teodoro is a difficult character to like. For a start, he's a twotimer, having already taken out an insurance policy against rejection by nurturing a back-up romance with Marcela (Claire Cox), one of Diana's ladies-in-waiting.

Rebecca Johnson's Diana is equally spiky: she's capricious, self-deceiving and quite happy to consider executing those who get in her way.

There's a sadomasochistic flavour to their relationship: when a punch from Diana elicits a gush of blood from Teodoro's nose, he stands there, his lips wet with gore, telling the audience about the excitement they both felt as the blow struck home. And the marital happiness with which, inevitably, the couple are supplied, is built entirely on Marcela's misery. This is a terrifyingly pragmatic play.

It's also very funny. The loudest laughs of the night are supplied by Simon Trinder's conniving servant, Tristan - whose shaven, scar-pitted skull and ragged leather jerkin give him the look of something that Peter Cushing might have trepanned in a late 1960s horror flick.

Trinder is gloriously, transcendently ugly: a malignant piglet with a contagious, snaggletoothed smile, and the undisputed star turn of this season. But his performance is not so big that it obscures the real attraction of the night: the play itself - a product of the Spanish Golden Age that has lost none of its lustre.

Until 5 March. Information: 0870 060 6631.

The Dog In The Manger (RSC Spanish Golden Age)