Thrills but no chills

The gruesome extremities of this great John Webster Revenge Tragedy have rarely been surpassed. There remains something disturbingly modern about the playwright's dark, despairing view of a cruel, godless world.

But Phyllida Lloyd's modernish-dress production, with faces video projected on screens or on a perspex mirror beneath the flight of steps that dominate the stage, disappoints. It only succeeds in transporting The Duchess of Malfi into a neutered, neutral no-man's land where the course of true sexappeal runs sluggish and horrors are ingenious rather than blood-chilling.

The secret, unofficial marriage of the Duchess (Janet McTeer) to her household steward, Antonio, is a charmingly amorous affair rather than a fatal, erotic passion, defying class barriers and conventions. You could not tell they come from different rungs on the social ladder. Charles Edwards's placid Antonio is too stiff and solid to be the ambitious homme fatale who would plausibly induce Miss McTeer's handsome, inviting, statuesque Duchess to fall from grace.

Webster set his scene in the depths of decadent Italy. Miss Lloyd's production is more concerned with spectacular effects - unimaginatively exploited - than the timeless drive of sexual desire and depravity. The atmosphere, despite sycophantic courtiers, thuggish guards, gun-shots and characters who remain sitting ghost-like on the steps after they have been dispatched, remains unfairly mild.

Will Keen's down-market Duke, the Duchess's incestuous, crazy twin brother, plots her death and then goes out of his guilty mind without succumbing to serious grief or guilt, though he makes a convincing lunatic. Ray Stevenson's wicked Cardinal oddly keeps his cool.

Lorcan Cranitch makes a bland, glaringly miscast Bosola. He dispatches the satirical shafts and sneers of this angry, young malcontent, with the ardour of a tired barman collecting the glasses at 11pm. He throws away Webster's great lines - and too many have been edited out of this production - as if they were theatrical refuse. When subjecting the Duchess to psychological torture and a

death-process that parodies a marriage masque, he chills no blood. The troupe of madmen, mildly gyrate on the steps, their faces in video close-up, with a cacophony of music, alarm-bells and shouts, though all their speeches have been excised. The effect is artily bathetic.

But Miss McTeer, high-voiced and childlike, hair awry, composure gone, is powerfully torn between stoic dignity and disintegration. She curses with a hoarse, fierce vehemence - passion splendidly discovered in death.

Until 10 March. Box office: 020 7452 3000.

The Duchess Of Malfi