The plot certainly has immortal, immoral themes: incestuous jealousy, royal connivings, a bought conscience. And setting the show in 1981, the year of that ill-starred Charles and Di match, is bound to stir up its own memories, although I'm guessing Prince Andrew never had the designs on Charles that Ferdinand has for this widowed sister.
It is the horrific intensity of this one plot - brother loves sister, sister loves servant, brother has absolutely everyone killed - playing out in one grim arc (rather than an atomised, many-legged plot) which makes the play so compelling. We see a spiral of debasement in which conscience is spelled C-A-S-H.
Director Imogen Russell Williams (full disclosure: we were at university together) applies some very interesting ideas to this scenario, most notably in the least noticeable place. The two mute staff who effect purposefully prolonged scene changes and function as spies, doctors and murderers within the play are the silent functionaries of the state, carrying out the Prince's wishes without compunction. Russell Williams is warning us against the complicity which kills. At least the hired hand, Bosola (naturally - as a criminal - he's Scottish), eventually comes to question his actions - these factota do not.
The text of the play, adapted for the modern ear by Bryony Markwick, really lifts off during Bosola's soliloquies, where she provides him with a poetry of her own. Elsewhere, the paparazzi and greed-is-good mentality filter through into questions of earning and worth, which Russell Williams bring out in flashbulbs and radio extracts.
Damian Christian-Howard as the beloved and twice-dispatched servant Anthony was an eager inamorato last night, while Katherine Gwen Pons as the Duchess made you feel her pain - and there is a lot of it. Tim Macavoy as Prince Ferdinand (hiss!) was quite extraordinary as he hid behind screens and turned into a wolf in his grief.
King's Head Theatre, Islington, until Sunday
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