The White Devil

Published Monday 13 October 2008 at 12:15 by Barbara Lewis

An ambitious John Webster sold his play The White Devil to the Queen Anne’s Men, a company that - we’re told - lacked the talent of Shakespeare’s the King’s Men, thus its production failed to give Webster the instant fame he craved.

His reputation is safer with the Menier Chocolate Factory. It doesn’t quite convert his tangled plotting and moral confusion into lucidity, but still extracts plenty of drama, meaning and edgy humour.

Under Jonathan Munby’s suitably unsubtle direction, the words devil and whore resound like mantras, while exaggeratedly religious music, yards of lush, blood-red velvet and a combination of lounge suits and plague doctor outfits convey depravity that is at once medieval and modern.

At the rotten core is a feline, nimble Aidan McArdle, as the scheming Flamineo. His slight, dark form is a sinister shadow to Vittoria, played by the statuesque blonde Claire Price, whose spirited performance protests the injustice of a woman’s lot, while allowing that she is far from innocent as she throws herself into the arms of Bracciano (Darrell D’Silva).

Drawn into the play’s mindset, we witness their passion as a mere reflex or means to an end. In any case, what’s the point of pursuing happiness when the one thing that is clear throughout is that the avenger Giovanni (Ross Armstrong) will undo them all?