Main House: The Witch of Edmonton

This Jacobean shocker by Rowley, Dekker and Ford gets a Perrault-fairytale redesign in Natasha Dawn's production. The branches of a blasted oak reach skywards like imploring arms; there are silken gowns, a scarlet hood, laced bodices and elaborate Restoration-style wigs. Sadly, its appeal ends there. Dawn's adaptation fails to interrogate the sexual politics of this fact-based story of the persecution and execution for witchcraft of outcast Elizabeth Sawyer. If anything, by changing the gender of some characters from male to female, she dilutes the work: the injustice of a phallocratic society feels less acute.

Equally problematic are the clumsy attempts at eroticism. Leonie Hill's lusty wench of a witch writhes on the floor in an embarrassingly unconvincing simulacrum of crazed lust as her hellhound familiar, a demonic dog (Tom Hunter) flounces about barechested, flexing his pecs. Indeed, there's so much self-admiring swishing and strutting all round that the subplots of deception, bigamy and murder are hopelessly garbled. Here was an opportunity to re-examine perceptions of feminine sexuality and the forces that propel human beings into evil; instead, Dawn seems to have been distracted by the visuals.