Sex, swordplay and a dripping heart on a skewer! John Ford's tale of Italian incest marks a fiery beginning to the new term in Oxford, where director Imogen Russell Williams has brought a most satisfying and entertaining production of a sometimes troubling play.

Poor Annabella has a number of suitors, but when the quiet, studious, Giovanni declares his brotherly love their lives would seem momentarily to have found a secret, blasphemous resolve. However, her father is determined to marry her, if not to the clownish Donaldo then to Soranzo, the elegant Parmisan with a mysterious past. When it emerges Annabella is pregnant by her brother the story descends inevitably into tragedy. It is all credit to the cast that the audience is kept caring what happens when the swords start flying and bodies begin to fall.

The play finishes with a superbly malevolent reworking of the Last Supper. The final act ends in semi-slow motion as the Cardinal enjoys the unfolding death from the table with a serenely sick smile on his face, supping his wine, eyes toward heaven, before proclaiming the property of all concerned now under Rome's divine control. Any scepticism towards Catholicism intended by the author is well served and we leave with a feeling that, whatever human events came and went, the church was an ever-present, immovable shadow.

Of a large cast Benedict Morrison gives a gleeful performance as the Cardinal, and as the Friar who tries to keep the incest in check by warning of the burning racks awaiting sinners in hell. Though we are never persuaded that Seiriol Davies' Soranzo really feels any love for Annabelle or much pain when things go awry, his assistant Vasques, played by Andrew Levesson, has a John Malkovitch-like deviousness that is convincing throughout as he stalks, oversees, and manipulates. A simple set design allows the story to move on quickly, and good use of light is made to render the switches in mood and location.

The main couple try hard, but Nick Gill's Giovanni struggles to make his (admittedly complex) words heard and Annabella is overshadowed by a vivacious Hippolyta, played with aplomb by Sara Gelfand. This is perhaps understandable: Annabella is a more difficult and subtle character than the revenge-at-all-costs Hippolyta, and it is uncertain whether we are supposed to feel sympathy for Giovanni and Annabella, who, after all, are hardly angels.

Any loss of nuance is secondary, however, in this rumbustious performance. Well worth checking out.

Ben O'Loughlin, 15.10.02