The White Devil
Lyric Hammersmith, London
**
John Webster's brilliant, bloody 1612 revenge tragedy is a poisonous brew of sex, intrigue and moral ambiguity. In Vittoria Corombona there is an exceptionally modern anti-heroine who is condemned not for her crimes but for her sexual appetites. Her brother Flamineo, who pimps her to his boss, the Duke of Brachiano, is a wideboy on the make in a world of dicey employment prospects. In the world of the play, there is a razor blade in every apple. Violence and cruelty are the norm and there are no longer any certainties, except that death will come, sooner rather than later.
Philip Franks's production is mostly intelligent, always clear and accessible, but it only succeeds in being modish, never modern. Part of the problem is the specificity of the setting: the play is transposed from the 16th century to the Rome of Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita. At her trial Vittoria turns up looking like Anita Ekberg; the soon to be unhappy couple celebrate their wedding in a sleazy nightclub. This is all reasonable enough, if not particularly illuminating. But even allowing for the fact that the 20th-century history of the Catholic church is not an honourable one, it stretches credulity to accept the level of church and papal corruption that the text demands.
Other touches are just gimmicky: the dumb show is replaced by home movies of the murders of Vittoria and Brachiano's husband and wife, which put you in mind of those brainless burglars who snap each other with a stolen camera while doing over a house.
Too much of the evening is over-emphatic, particularly Rae Smith's design which strips back the stage to the back wall, has a central image of a crucifix overlaid with a sword and an old rubbish tip in one corner with a bird cage perched on top. The lighting is terrific, and there is much to commend in Sebastian Harcombe's nervy Flamineo and Zoe Waites's Vittoria, an intelligent woman trying to be herself in a world that sees her only as a commodity. But in the end, although Franks offers us the pain of the play, he seldom gets to the heart of its passion or our contemporary passion for it.
Until October 28. Box office: 020-8741 2311.
