"WEBSTER saw the skull beneath the skin," TS Eliot said, and the work of the Jacobean playwright John Webster reflects his fascination with the dark side of humanity.
His tragic heroes are not vacillators like Hamlet or Shakespeare's other flawed fools; they are men of action, who commit themselves to violence and immorality with no backward glance.
The White Devil, performed at the Redgrave Theatre in Clifton, Bristol all this week, is a story of lust, wealth, power, corruption, murder and bloody revenge set in Renaissance Italy.
Duke Brachiano's love for the beautiful courtesan Vittoria Corombona impels him to murder his own wife to be free to romance her.
His brother-in-law, the powerful Francisco de Medici, swears he will have revenge for his sister's death, while Vittoria's brother Flamineo seeks only to take advantage of the situation by any means necessary to secure his own advancement.
The play is brought up to date by setting it in the cut-throat world of 1920s Hollywood.
Director Bob Hamlin said: "Webster's play springs from a physical, passionate affair.
"We need to see the passion of the murders and this can be perfectly reflected in the larger-than-life Hollywood of the '20s and '30s."
The White Devil, performed by students of Bristol Old Vic's theatre school, runs until February 28 at 7.30pm every evening except Sunday. Tickets are £9 or £6 concessions from the box office on 0117 973 3855.
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