Death, according to the fated Duchess Of Malfi, hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits.

The Nightingale has six if you include backstage and part of the Grand Central pub below.

And the resident Prodigal company make use of them all in this superb piece of promenade theatre, which transports the action of Webster's classic tragedy from Renaissance Italy to Fifties Brighton.

The Duchess of Malfi is a young widow, persecuted by her inheritance-hungry brothers when they discover she has embarked on a secret family life with her servant.

Here the brothers are heads of a Brighton Rock-esque gangster fraternity and Miranda Henderson's elegant Duchess is surrounded by sharp-suited heavies who field us from scene to scene with a mixture of magnetism and menace, and drop the "H"s in Webster's antiquated verse to make a sort of Clockwork Orange-style patois.

Illuminated by candles, torches and, when the shutters are pulled back, the cold light of a Brighton evening, Jane Collin's direction is astonishingly slick.

Fired by Alister O'Loughlin's sympathetic assassin Bosola, the ensemble action is never less than engrossing, the intimacy it creates both chilling and addictive.

In one extraordinary sequence we are beckoned into the Duchess' chamber by her daughter, who plays with a train-set as her mother lies weeping.

"There is nothing to see here," purrs her gay Italian manservant protectively, and so we pass through the kitchen, where the heavies are having a cuppa, and on down to the Grand Central bar where an end-of-the-pier cabaret (with meat raffle and ventriloquist's dummy) completes the Duchess' imaginatively brutal torture.

"This is flesh, and blood, sir," said The Duchess in seducing her lover, "'tis not the figure cut in alabaster kneels at my husband's tomb".

Putting those static representations of Jacobean tragedy we've seen in recent months to shame, Prodigal grab Webster by the balls, look their audience in the eye and breathe such life into The Duchess you'll feel the adrenaline pumping long after the corpses have ceased to pile.

Since the run is a sell-out, we'll have to advise you kill to get a ticket.

Alternatively, the toothpick-chewing bruiser on the door looks like he might be open to bribes.

Until Sunday, 7pm and 10pm, returns only, 01273 709709.