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Something wicked this way comes: The White Devil is deliciously depraved, writes PATRICK MARMION

By Patrick Marmion for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:36 EST, 2 February 2017 | Updated: 19:36 EST, 2 February 2017

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Jamie Ballard (Brachiano) and Kate Stanley-Brennan (Vittoria) in The White Devil

It's not that John Webster had a low opinion of humans; he just took inordinate pleasure in their shocking behaviour.

The Jacobean playwright, a late contemporary of Shakespeare, revelled in the intrigue of his violent times.

His was a world where self- serving characters were found in extremis and where they were at their most expressive when pleading for their lives — or libidos.

The White Devil is one of his finest, most dyspeptic works. It’s dyspepsia plus plus plus.

But if you think Donald Trump is bad, you should get to Shakespeare’s Globe at once. Webster’s plot is not only fiendish, but fiendishly clever — and based on a real-life tale of lust, murder and revenge in Renaissance Italy.

The stereotypes of Italian caitiffs served him well; as did his play’s anti-Catholicism, which enabled him to smuggle in a lot of religious ridicule.

Modern audiences may balk at his characters’ apparent misogyny, yet the women in his play hold their own — and give as bad as they get. They are certainly no worse than the scheming, lying, backstabbing men.

The play is based on a real-life tale of lust, murder and revenge in Renaissance Italy

Our heroine Vittoria, in particular, is a wily beauty conniving in her brother’s plan to murder her dozy husband and hook up with an infatuated wealthy Duke (Jamie Ballard).

Vittoria is described variously as a ‘damnable’, ‘stately’ and ‘advanced’ whore; but in the impressively able hands of Kate Stanley Brennan she is also a plucky, brazen, alluring and devious vixen.

She is pimped out by her reprobate brother, played with unbridled enthusiasm by Joseph Timms.

With more plots than a municipal graveyard and a Tarantino body count, it’s hard keeping up. All the same, Annie Ryan directs a splendidly unruly production.

It is long, at two hours 45 minutes, but it’s also wonderfully wicked, if you’ve a mind for such delicious depravity.