The White Devil is probably only worthwhile for an evening's entertainment if you have a limitless passion for revenge drama. Almost every character has a bloodthirsty desire to avenge some dishonourable act or another, but it really is vexing that the only characters who seem to have any real cause for such behaviour are precisely the ones who don't stoop to it - the women, who are given a somewhat unsympathetic portrayal here as "sexually ambitious" and "highly manipulative".

The story is as convoluted as you'd expect from sub-Shakespearean medieval drama, with so many twists and turns and new avowals to seek revenge that by the second half it's difficult to hold interest in the action, or to care about what happens to the characters (although placing bets on how outlandish their death scenes will be does liven things up a bit - who could have predicted "death by poisoned helmet"?). The plot is not easily summarised, admittedly because I'm still wrestling with understanding it myself, but the action basically revolves around two noble families of Italy - the household of the Duke of Bracciano, played with lots of bluster and not much substance by Ben Levine, and the family of his wife the Duchess, whom he has killed in order to be with his mistress (adulterous relationships are the other main theme of the play, presumably to provide a flimsy explanation for why everyone wants to kill one another).

That seems to be the main problem of the play, and it's a problem that this production, despite its good intentions, can't overcome. There are no motives and no messages; the richness of the language is a mere gloss to disguise the fact that the play itself is essentially lots of bluster and not much substance. It is the richness and complexity of the language that provides the stumbling block for many of the actors here, and there is a strong feeling that if only there had been more subtlety and experience applied to the reading of the text, any natural drive that the play has would have been much more evident. As it is, many lines are swallowed up in the breathless endeavour to get to the end of the sentence, although to be fair there is great variation in how far the actors are guilty of this. There is some well-balanced dialogue between the Cardinal and Vittoria (Kate Donald) in the trial scene, which proves to be one of the best scenes of the evening.

There are other positive points worthy of mention - on the technical side, the lighting design is creative and effective, the set is well-matched to the action, and there is good use of original music to set the atmosphere. However, it seems that, like the language, these simply function as attractive glosses to conceal the flimsiness of the play itself. Entertaining it may be, but The White Devil lacks the substance to pack a real punch.

Alison Gowland, March 2004