THOMAS Middleton's 1657 play Women Beware Women is a richly dark dissection of moral corruption.

Currently playing at the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon, it centres on Livia - a rich, bored and predatory widow played with steely splendour by Penelope Wilton.

As casually as arranging a dinner party she helps the duke in his seduction of a young bride, snaps up the cuckolded husband as her own new lover and then tricks her niece into an incestuous relationship with Livia's brother...

Well, it is quite a tangled set of relationships but Laurence Boswell directs with brilliant clarity and has strong support in his cast that mixes veteran RSC actors with an encouraging crop of talented and newer faces.

Tim Pigott-Smith is all hidden fire and unmelting ice as the Duke of Florence and Susan Engel as the Widow provides one steadfast moral constant among the swirling desires.

Hayley Atwell (Bianca) and Elliot Cowan (Leantio) are the self-obsessed then lost and confused young marrieds who fall prey to the machinations of Livia and the Duke, ultimately lured to their fates by promises of wealth and power.

The lively Isabella (Emma Cunniffe), facing marriage to the doltish Ward (Bruce Mackinnon), is also easy to convince that her feelings for Hippolito (Rob Edwards) are lawful and so swerves from her course.

There's only one way out of all this in a Jacobean tragedy and that's multiple death, blood and a steadily growing pile of corpses on the stage. That it manages to keep some sense of dignity is thanks to the actors, although designer Richard Hudson has incorporated the odd safety pin here and zip there to remind us that our own punk age can't be too complacent about morality at the heart of power.

The Royal Shakespeare Company production continues at the Swan for the season. LG