In 1966, Trevor Nunn rescued this play from centuries of neglect with a stunning black-and-silver production that highlighted the work's cruelty and comedy. It's a measure of how much classical theatre has changed that Melly Still's revival - the second this week, after Jonathan Moore's at the Royal Exchange in Manchester - comes equipped with all manner of modern dance and visual symbolism that makes explicit what is apparent in the text.
It takes five minutes, in fact, to get to the first line of the play, once attributed to Tourneur and now ascribed to Middleton. In that time, the revolving stage whirls around to give us a panoramic vision of a dolce vita society filled with acrobatic movement, pounding music, frantic copulation and even animated skulls. The problem with all this preliminary tosh is that it gives the impression the play is set in a peculiarly louche disco rather than a decadent Italian court. It also undercuts the text so that Vindice's opening speech, painting a vivid picture of corrupted luxury, is pre-empted by the sensory overkill.
Once Still starts to trust the play, her production rapidly improves. Rory Kinnear, our fastest-rising classical actor, clearly has the measure of Vindice: a malcontent who vows to avenge himself on a duke who has killed his mistress. Disguised as a camp pandar called Piato, Vindice finds himself employed on sundry dubious errands.
Kinnear could wring still more torment out of the scene where, forced to prostitute his own sister to accommodate the duke's son, he discovers his mother's shocking compliance. But he invests the murder of the duke, through lip-smacking contact with a poisoned skeleton, with the right sadistic relish. He is also brilliant in the deliciously absurd scene where, reverting to the moody persona of Vindice, he is commissioned to kill Piato. "All this is I," cries Kinnear with the astonishment of a man engaged in parodic self-slaughter.
At its best, Still's production captures the play's mix of savagery and satire. There are deft touches in the design, by Ti Green and Still herself, such as the skull-laden image of Caravaggio's St Jerome Writing in Vindice's study.
Elliot Cowan as the duke's legitimate son, Lussurioso, and Billy Carter as the illegitimate offspring Spurio perform with, respectively, appropriate heat and cold. Katherine Manners also impresses as Vindice's shiningly virtuous sister. But, just as Lyn Gardner wrote in the Guardian that the Manchester Exchange revival was too full of itself, I feel Still's restlessly kaleidoscopic version would be even better if it placed more trust in Middleton's mordant language.
· In rep until August 7. Box office: 020-7452 3000.