The Rape Of Lucrece

Sounding as though Shakespearean English is her mother tongue, Camille O'Sullivan delivers a muscular and emotional one-woman performance of Shakespeare's dark narrative poem, The Rape Of Lucrece. The poem is presented half as song and half as speech and the musical adaptations, created jointly by O'Sullivan and pianist Feargal Murray, are so finely attuned to the text that you forget the music has come some 400 years after the fact. O'Sullivan's storytelling skills are in perfect alignment with the task at hand; The Rape Of Lucrece offers the audience an unparalleled engagement with text.

Handpicked by director Elizabeth Freestone for this project, O'Sullivan performs the rapist, Tarquin, his victim, the blameless Lucrece, and the narrator, powerfully, fluently, expressing the interior worlds of the characters. O'Sullivan is fearsomely talented and gives herself unconditionally to her material. Extraordinarily, although she doesn't change her body language in the parts of the show where she's delivering Tarquin's lines, her actual appearance takes on a masculinity – the sheer force of her living the character through his words creates an illusion; it's uncanny, more so because she's pregnant.

This production of The Rape Of Lucrece puts a stethoscope to the language, amplifying its pulse. The set conveys grandeur with imposing panels suggesting a cathedral interior, impressively and intriguingly lit; the lighting design is inspired – leaving the audience with a powerful and poignant illustration at the end.

Royal Shakespeare Company Sumner Theatre, MTC