The Duchess [of Malfi] at Trafalgar Theatre review: it’s thrilling to see Jodie Whittaker back on stage

Jodie Whittaker makes a bold return to the stage after 12 years away, in Zinnie Harris’s uneven updating of John Webster’s brutal Jacobean tragedy. It’s an overblown peach of a role for the star of Doctor Who and Broadchurch, packed with passion, grandeur, and the gamut of life from birth to death. But Harris’s adaptation only comes into its own in the second half. Throughout the first, I wondered what the point was.

Harris, who also directs – bad move – keeps the bones of the story: a noble widow secretly marries her servant and has children by him. She is ruthlessly persecuted for this “sin” against the family name (and fortune) then killed by her brothers; one of them her twin Ferdinand, who then goes mad; the other a Cardinal who also kills his own mistress.