The revenge melodrama might be a better description of Thomas Kyd's 16thcentury opus than the title he bestowed upon it, but it is treated in this production, directed by Jason Byrne for the Loose Canon Theatre Company, with a rare seriousness. The acting of the main drama is naturalistic almost to the point of monotone apart from some rare and carefully-staged outbursts of theatrical emotion. The acting of the play-within-the-play, which brings the piece to its bloody conclusion, is played in masks as a kind of grotesque pantomime.

Given the visible physical skills of the players, and the generally very disciplined performance of the company in the simplest of settings well lit by Paul Keogan, one must assume that everything is being done precisely as the director intended. The costumes appear to try for timelessness: singlets or T-shirts atop trousers with a variety of caps and cloaks, academic gowns or cloaks and overcoats, all except the women and the villain in crew cuts, and everyone in bare feet. It is no more a pretty sight than the play itself.

But the text, for a 20th-century audience, needs significant cutting, and the melodrama could do with a great deal more theatrical gusto than is evident here. Lines of dramatic import are too often spoken in the same flat tone as lines of banal padding, and some of the vocal projection leaves something to be desired despite an admirable clarity of enunciation. Unfortunately, the determined seriousness of the production invests the whole with a deliberate slowness which leads into great stretches of theatrical dullness. It is usually interesting (not least because the play is seldom staged), but it does not often become exciting.