The source of the stench that will invade your nostrils throughout this performance is the coffee-stained lab coats contributed by Rosy Wiseman’s costuming. Her design seemed to want to provoke some kind of subversive challenge, but, like the rest of the production, her ideas were in fact hackneyed, immature, and seemingly empty. She did not, unfortunately, redeem herself as an actor. As one part of a sizeable creative team that includes a ‘movement emeritus’, you would be forgiven for expecting a performance of considerable artistic worth; the reality is not so. Toby Parker-Rees’ interpretation of The Revenger’s Tragedy was an overblown, tacky presentation of a play that should demand an intense performance expressed through concentrated stylistics. Incredibly, embarrassingly, aggressively bad, this production was barely redeemed by its mercifully short running time.

The performance clearly wishes to approach complex notions of lust and betrayal within the play, but these ideas are never satisfactorily executed. Decisions made by the director remain unjustified by the performance; the choice to replace the Duke’s sons with daughters, for example, may have represented some lame social commentary, but merely added confusion to this histrionic ensemble. Attempts at black comedy were similarly unsuccessful; the audible sniggers from the audience derived instead from the escalating lunacy of the performances. Any genuine humour within the play was delivered by Ben Blyth, whose eye-bulging, nervy weirdness as Vindice earns him the one star. Volatile yet controlled, his performance gives lucidity and some credibility to an otherwise totally hopeless production. He was assisted somewhat by Leo Parker-Rees as Hippolito, his potassium-deficient associate, who munches nonchalantly and perpetually on a series of inexplicable bananas. Whilst his performance was commendable, the constant presence of fruit in his mouth hindered even the simple enunciation of his lines. The remainder of the cast delivered blow upon blow of unimaginative, insubstantial melodrama that in truth makes a tasteless mockery of Middleton’s (or Tourneur’s, as you like) script.

Bizarrely angry in parts and oddly excitable in others, all textual subtlety is lost in the heavy hands of director Toby Parker-Rees. So much of the play is cut, so much left unexplained that the tone of this production is never fully established, and as the bodies and banana skins pile up, it becomes literally incomprehensible. Highly-strung and uncomfortable to watch, this bipolar production completely lacks any sense of dramaturgical maturity. Efforts to produce a raw, visceral performance are a transparent failure; in reality the play epitomised every pitfall of student theatre.