Shorn of its comic subplot, John Ford's 1633 tragedy becomes a short sharp shocker in Chris Meads's atmospheric revival, which relocates the action to the late 1950s. Matti Houghton's Annabella is still very much a schoolgirl in her gym knickers and grey pinafore when her brother Giovanni returns from university demanding that she love him or kill him. This transgressive love will prove fatal to them both in a claustrophobic world where the candles endlessly flicker in a shrine to the idea of the perfect woman: one who is a virtuous wife and mother and very dead.
Ford's play takes its title from the final condemnatory line spoken by the Cardinal, but Meads's fluid, layered staging presents Annabella as the innocent, often thoughtful victim of a fiery passion. In a world dominated by men and religion, her very body is something over which men barter, and Giovanni's passion is only sated by absolute possession of his sister's heart. Even as he first beds her, their father sits at the dining table with Annabella's would-be husband, Soranzo, arranging the marriage as if hammering out a business deal.
Meads slightly loses his way in the bloody denouement, in which he overdoes the homage to the teenage slasher movie. But he astutely captures the dreary, oppressive Sunday afternoon atmosphere of the era, and a family in emotional retreat from each other.
There's good work from a fine ensemble, with Ken Bradshaw excellent as the casually cruel servant and Eileen O'Brien making the most of the Romeo and Juliet-style nurse who also falls victim to double standards.
