Christopher Marlowe is sexy again. Not that he ever stopped being so - Marlowe is the most sensuous and tactile of Renaissance writers - but regional theatres are suddenly rediscovering the fact.

Admittedly, two Emmerdale stars at Hull Truck doesn't have quite same cachet as Joseph Fiennes at the Crucible, but the very fact that a popular new writing venue should throw Marlowe into the mix speaks volumes about his new-found credibility.

Faustus is the first insatiable consumerist in English drama. Having made his pact with Mephistopheles to have anything he wants, he chooses to spend the rest of his life shopping and fucking.

Even so, the rather confused claims on the publicity leaflet (that the play "has captivated audiences for over half a century") seems to be pushing the contemporaneity card a bit far.

It's intriguing to speculate on a post-war Hull in which Marlowe and Philip Larkin were drinking chums. The majority of the audience look like they might be doing literature modules at Larkin's old university, and the production itself has a fresh, youthful aspect.

The report of Faustus "banqueting, carousing and swilling amongst the students" has rarely seemed so apposite. Director Kate Bramley has chopped the text to within an inch of its life. It's a bit savage, but it makes exigent use of a cast of five to cover 20 parts and keeps the narrative running at a high rate of revs.

The performances, especially Emmerdale's Stuart Wade and Tonicha Jeronimo, are boldly sketched rather than minutely detailed; perhaps unsurprisingly, it's the farcical interludes which fare best with the slap-bang Hull Truck style.

The vignette about the victualer's stolen goblet is a gem and the audience gobbled it up. Pip Leckenby's fustian tower of Faustian tomes provides an apposite, all-purpose environment, enlivened by frequent spurts of genuine flame.

This is classical theatre on a shoe-string, but at least the string has been borrowed from a decent pair of shoes. Until May 26. Box office: 01482 323638.