Theatre: Le Cid

When Declan Donnellan describes a production as his best to date, you have to sit up and take note. Over the last two decades, the director's name has become associated with theatre of the highest quality. But even by his standards, to have taken on the French classic, Corneille's Le Cid and impressed the home crowd, as he did at the Avignon Festival last year, is a major achievement. He first staged this tragi-comedy, in which a young man slays his lover's father to avenge an insult his own suffered, in 1986, with his company, Cheek by Jowl. That was in translation. Since then, his visual style has become even more fluent. The sleek, modern- dress Avignon production (right) is coming to London in the original French. Now that's confiance for you.

Riverside Studios, London W6 (0181-237 1111) opens tonight, runs to 26 Feb; with subtitles