Given that Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) is rarely performed, it might be pertinent to point out that this Jacobean drama is not, in fact, the striking feminist cri de coeur that director Katie Mitchell would have us believe.
What it is is a pioneering "domestic" tragedy, focusing on the middle classes at home rather than cataclysmic affairs of state, with rather a loose grip on coherent characterisation and a notably vague sense of time.
Once National Theatre regulars have recovered from the surprise of a multi-level set that is almost identical to the one for the recent Season's Greetings, there's much to reflect upon. Mitchell updates the action to 1919, a period more familiar to us than the 1600s, yet still one in which women are forced to operate in an oppressively male-dominated world. Mitchell's slick and stylish editing of the text - begone, lengthy male monologues - and commendable attempts to superimpose some kind of credible chronology make it clear that Anne (Liz White) and Susan (Sandy McDade) have little control over anything but their own deaths.
That set (clever work from Lizzie Clachan and Vicki Mortimer) actually represents two houses, one a crumbling pile from the landed gentry and the other a neat abode of the emergent middle-class. Here the two plot strands, tenuously linked, unravel. Anne, married to respectable John Frankford (Paul Ready), starts an affair with his friend Wendoll (Sebastian Armesto). Susan, saddled with a hot-headed brother (Leo Bill), sacrifices much to pay his debts.
Mitchell adds some neat between-scenes interpolations to flesh out the action and attempts, by hinting at an unhappy wedding night and general lack of affection on her husband's part, to explain why Anne plots her disastrous course. It's not enough, though, as we don't sense any startling attraction between the illicit lovers. Mitchell would have done well to push this line of enquiry further.
Sandy McDade is consigned to much wafting in anguish up and down the staircase, but there's strong support from Ready as a decent man floundering at the blackening of his all-important reputation. The final line, transferred here from Frankford to Susan with venomous impact, makes us ponder the title anew.
A robustly intelligent re-reading of a tricky play.
In rep until Sept 11 (020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk).
A Woman Killed With Kindness
National Theatre: Lyttelton
South Bank, SE1 9PX
