There is plenty of bite and not a little bark in this version of Lope de Vega's 1614 comedy, a tale of confused love that in David Johnston's wonderfully supple version seems both of its time and astonishingly modern.
Set in Naples - then a Spanish possession - it tells of a haughty countess, Diana, who turns into a bitch on heat after discovering that her previously ignored secretary Teodoro is having a love affair with one of her women, Marcella. Having noticed the bone, Diana wants it for herself, but she blows hot and cold as desire and duty prove impossible bedfellows in a tightly regulated world of honour, where to marry beneath her would bring disgrace.
Teodoro, who loves Marcela, but is attracted by the countess and the prospect of being a count, is knocked like a shuttlecock between the two women, with the manipulative and cunning Diana always playing the better game. Johnston's translation is funny, accessible and heart-breaking, and suffused with the imagery of falling and flying. Diana falls when she falls in love; Teodoro is a 17th-century Icarus in danger of flying too close to the sun.
What is so good about the evening, besides Laurence Boswell's sparky production, is that it is so full of ambiguities and ambivalence. These are not nice people - Teodoro is callous in the way he discards Marcela and Diana is a calculating bitch - but Joseph Millson and Rebecca Johnson are so delightful in their bewildered contrariness that you long for them to get it together.
The pair are outstanding, but so too are everyone else, particularly John Ramm's lunatic suitor, Simon Trinder's hilarious, quick-thinking servant and Claire Cox's discarded Marcella, whose eyes are two open, weeping wounds.
· In rep until March 26. Box office: 0870 060 6631.
