The White Devil, Menier Chocolate Factory, London

This excellent production of John Webster's Jacobean revenge tragedy is book-ended by a neat, straight-faced joke. At the start, as we take our seats, a functionary is seen in the final stages of mopping the marble floor of the Italian court. At the finish, he's back on with his cleaning equipment – only by now we can appreciate the necessity of his task as he swabs away the gore from the multiple deaths we have witnessed in between.

Violent, cruel death is the only certainty in Webster's court where all else is treacherous and ambiguous, right down to the title of the tragedy. Does it refer to the adulteress, Vittoria Corombona, who is arraigned for complicity in the murder of her husband? Or does it apply to her hypocritical accusers – the corrupt cardinal and his cohorts – on whom she rounds magnificently in the great set-piece trial? Claire Price is magnificent in the role. Clad in a gown of crushed scarlet, she confronts her enemies with a scathing sarcasm in a manner expertly poised between bravery and brazenness.

Staged on a narrow traverse set, with doors at either end and a few chairs, Jonathan Munby's production has terrific pace and bite. The verse is delivered in an incisive tumble of eloquence. The updating to modern times has throughout a clarifying force. One of the main characters is the scheming Flamineo, Vittoria's brother and the "secretary" to her lover, the Duke of Bracciano (excellent Darrell D'Silva). Aidan McArdle portrays Flamineo with acid-etched conviction as a coke-snorting, shiny-suited machiavel who has been driven to his underhand machinations because he has a taste for the kind of llfestyle his poor background would never have afforded him.

From his scabrous mimes, you deduce that he's had to fellate his way into the fringes of the big time. And from the mascara and blue eye-shadow, you assess that he's a bisexual who – as with Ferdinand, brother of Webster's other great heroine, the Duchess of Malfi – identifies with his sibling to a (sexual) fault. The great scene where he dupes his sister into a suicide pact in order to expose her treachery is here further tricked out with shared earrings and Cocteau-esque kisses.

There are superb support performances from a crack cast who bring a wealth of experience from work at the Royal Shakespeare Company. I mean it as a compliment when I say that this show sometimes has the feel of an RSC production in exile.

To November 15 (020-7907 7060)

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