Dominic Cooke's revival of Marston's The Malcontent brings to an end the Swan's triumphant season of classical rarities. If I liked it the least of the five shows, it is because Cooke's production imposes itself on the play rather than serving it. By transposing the action from Renaissance Genoa to some stagey Latin American dictatorship, Cooke misses the darkness at the heart of Marston's tragi-comic satire.
Admittedly it is not the easiest play to revive. Originally performed in 1603 by the Children of the Chapel Royal, its plot has more twists than a bent corkscrew. The key point is that the rightful duke of Genoa, Altofronto, has been usurped and returns in the guise of a cynical malcontent, Malevole. Relishing his role as a rebarbative jester, he exposes the court's adulterous intrigues; and when the usurping Pietro is himself supplanted by the mendacious Mendoza, it is Malevole who sets things to rights, reclaiming his dukedom and his imprisoned wife.
If one thing is clear, it is that this is a play of its time. The year 1603 not only saw "the general terror" inspired by Elizabeth's death but also a period of plague and inflation. Moreover, Marston's play is saturated in the theatrical conventions of the time: revenge motifs, disguised dukes and the notion of Italy as a Machiavellian cesspit. By setting it in a sex-and-sambas South America, Cooke drains the play of its political reality and moral urgency.
Even if the production is wrong-headed, there are some gutsy performances from a first-rate ensemble. Antony Sher constantly whips off his wig to remind us of the wronged duke underneath Malevole's disguise. Comedy and outrage also combine in a characteristically inventive moment when Sher tremblingly raises his dagger on learning that Mendoza plans to marry his own imprisoned wife.
Joe Dixon lends Mendoza exactly the right snickering voluptuousness as he rhapsodises over the "pleasure unutterable" of sex while fingering his long cigar. And there is fine work from Anna Madeley who, as Altofronto's penned-up wife, manages to make virtue dynamic. But, while the acting is excellent, there is something extravagantly pointless about shifting Marston's satire from the land of the Medicis to that of Eva Peron.
· In rep until September 13. Box office: 0870 609 1110.
