The presence of Jude Law will certainly attract hip young movie-goers to this version of 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, but the real marvel of David Lan's electric production is just how modern he succeeds in making John Ford's 400-year-old play seem. It could have been written yesterday for the Royal Court.
His success is built upon Richard Hudson's beautifully minimalist set - two tilted wooden blocks that look like a bridge built from either side of a river but have failed to meet in the middle. From wherever you are sitting in the theatre, the design occasionally makes you crane your neck but, like the production, it constantly offers new perspective. The costumes are vaguely 30s, but somehow the evening works within two time frames: you know that you are watching a 1651 play about 17th-century Parma but you think of it in the here and now.
A lot of this has to do with the acting, which is unfussy, coolly intelligent and as keen and fatal as a stiletto hit to the heart. When Giovani and his sister Annabella - a shimmering, brilliant debut from newcomer Eve Best - first acknowledge their love, they peck at each other like shy sparrows and then fall on each other like starving vultures.
There is something pure and tender about this doomed relationship. They are like children playing, children who have never learned how to grow up and connect with the real world: she, through gender and circumstance; he, through emotional immaturity and possible mental illness.
But what begins in innocence turns to corruption; what starts as love turns into lust. As Lan suggests with a smoky atmosphere and shadowy masked watchers who glide around the stage, this is a society that is rotten to the core but always on the look-out for sin.
By the end Annabella remains untouched, almost virginal, a victim. But Law's Giovani is beyond redemption. He kills his sister and his unborn baby with the sweet smile of the slaughterhouse executioner. Though he talks like a lover, his face has the sweaty pallor of one who is in the grip of a terrible sickness and his eyes have the glazed blankness of a raving psychopath.
Until November 5. Box office 0171-928 6363.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable
** Mediocre * Terrible
