It has always seemed curious that Brighton, a town with so many resident thespians, should produce so little theatre. Drawing on the talents of local actors, many with national reputations, new company InService aims to change that. They will have to do better than they manage here with John Webster's charnel house tale, directed by David Oyelowo, an excellent actor who in only his second production as a director sets himself a mammoth task.
This is not an easy play, even if the characters of this flamboyant 17th-century tragedy of wild justice would be entirely recognisable to us today from kiss and tell tabloid stories. Lust and murder intermingle as Vittoria and the Duke Branchiano, aided by Vittoria's ambitious brother Flamineo, blatantly indulge their licentious passion and soon find themselves falling foul of convention. The play's great scene is Vittoria's arraignment as a harlot in court, and although Sophie Hunter's Vittoria lacks passion, Oyelowo handles it well, turning on the house lights so that the audience are implicated in a scenario where justice must be seen to be done.
Transposing the play to a military setting adds little to a production that aims to be modern but always seems to be suspended in a no-man's-land between past and present. And turning Vittoria's brothers into sisters may serve the needs of casting but doesn't adequately serve the needs of the play and lacks social and emotional conviction. The production will improve as the cast gain confidence, but the evening so lacks pace that during the final bloody pile-up of corpses when the dead are reanimated for a final speech, I felt the urge to give them a helping hand towards expiration so we could go home.
· Until February 4. Box office: 01273 709709.
