Lucy Laing as the Duchess, Tom Blyth as Ferdinand and Stephen MacNeice as Bosola

Webster's dark tragedy of brotherly lust and revenge is a favourite of mine. It's got some great characters - the good, the flawed and the out and out bad. It has love, duplicity, madness and murder. Plenty to entertain.

Pell Mell's production is simply staged with a series of curtains dividing the stage at appropriate points and the very bare minimum of props - some cushions and throws on the floor for a bed chamber and a pole with a couple of chains for a prison. Nothing to distract you from the story of the young widowed Duchess of Malfi (Lucy Laing) who defies her brothers request not to marry by attaching herself to her steward Antonio (Callum Cameron) and having a child with him.

The Duchess is an interesting character. She's done her duty in the past and wants to use her new found freedom to marry whom she chooses but falls foul of the male-dominated world and in particular her jealous and obsessive twin Ferdinand (Tom Blyth).

Laing's Duchess is a little too capricious and lacking in charm to fully empathise with her situation. She was probably at her best in the bedchamber scene with Antonio where there was a nice relaxed playfulness between husband and wife which did make what follows more difficult to bear, in a good way.