My first play at the Swan Theatre at the RSC (absolutely beautiful theatre) and what a hoot it was. Bawdy, brash, tacky and funny.

I could really imagine this being super popular when it was written in the 16th Century, played at the Globe maybe. Playing to the pit with tabloid-like glee of the infidelity, adultery, botched attempts at and then final murder.

This is apparently the first recorded time of a play about a woman who commits adultery and murder. It’s a true story. Imagine being in the Elizabethan crowd never having seen anything as shocking as this.

The programme has an article that discusses feminity distorted — discussing other female murders, Myra Hindley, Maxine Carr et al, and our morbid fascination with them. Alice Arden was the first.

The play itself does suffer a little if you don’t have the context but there’s a great pace to this as Alice and her lover of lower birth, Mosby decide to kill her husband, Arden — an import-export magnet who seems to care not for those around him and cares only about making money.

The lovers and those they ask to kill Arden, are a band of fair fools as they fail at numerous opportunities. The actions of the two ex military they engage are brilliantly and darkly funny, wonderfully portrayed as being on the edge and not the brightest money obsessed mercenaries. I loved the audiences gasps at their japes and idiocy.

This is another play with no interval and it worked superbly as the play built towards the murder and eventually the undoing of the gang. I particularly enjoyed the full use of the stage, the interaction with the audience and the use of the pitch black to disorient the audience too as the band try to break into Arden’s house at night.

I’ve read several comments about bringing this to 1980s Essex more than Kent where Arden’s house apparently still stands. I think you have to be incredibly nit-picky to not enjoy this production though.

4/5. Bawdy Elizabethan dark comedy