The Duchess of Malfi at BFI Southbank

James MacTaggart makes dazzling use of the rooms, staircases, doorways and fireplaces of Chastleton House to reveal the complexities, both personal and political, of John Webster’s masterpiece. The play was written c1612, the year that Chastleton was completed, and the production achieves an appropriately elaborate and detailed Jacobean style while avoiding picture-book spectacle. Delivering the verse with respectful intelligence, Eileen Atkins is quietly magnificent as the tragic Duchess and Michael Bryant is pitch-perfect as the scheming servant Bosola.