Helen

Euripides's playful anti-war romance offers a fascinating counter-history of Helen, the Spartan queen with, in Marlowe's phrase, 'the face that launched a thousand ships'. In this retelling the real Helen was never actually abducted by Paris - making a nonsense of the whole of the Trojan War - but was instead transported by the gods to Egypt, where she is discovered 17 years later by her conflict-weary husband, Menelaus.

The Globe is good at earthy humour - this is a space that can make you see the funny side of 'King Lear' - and Deborah Bruce's production, assisted by Frank McGuinness's colloquial rendering of the text, plays heavily on those comedic strengths. Penny Downie is outstanding as the flame-haired Helen, a quirky pragmatist ingeniously scheming a way back into the affections of Menelaus (Paul McGann) and out of Egypt. Rawiri Paratene's camp, irascible Egyptian king meanwhile takes the production into 'Carry On Up the Nile' territory.

Not that the production is without a hint of spiritual transcendence, with Claire van Kampen's inventive music (operatic when countertenor William Purefoy, barefoot in a white tuxedo, is singing; elsewhere there's even a hint of British ska band Madness) pushing the play in the direction of 'The Winter's Tale'.

However, the postmodern mixing of heterogeneous elements is most evident - and perhaps least successful - in Gideon Davey's gaudy stage design, which is dominated by huge cut-out letters of the kind you might expect to see on a TV gameshow set.