At the curtain call, Bron and her courtiers rose from the dead, turned as one, and looked daggers at us.
This time round, John Webster’s revenge tragedy proves heartrending as well as ferociously chilling. That’s thanks to superb acting, especially from Janet McTeer as the titular heroine who is cruelly punished for secretly marrying her steward Antonio against the orders of her repressive brothers – the incestuously obsessed Duke Ferdinand and a shamelessly criminal cardinal.In Phyllida Lloyd’s modern dress production, which hovers between the 1930s and today, Italy is a dark chasm that looks simultaneously grand and creepily austere (as designed by Mark Thompson). I’d like to beg Eleanor Bron’s pardon for my lack of restraint. When the National staged The Duchess of Malfi back in the 1980s, a school friend and I got such appalling giggles about the production’s portentous ticking clocks and proliferating corpses that we set the whole front row off. And in case all this sounds too much like hard work, the choreographer shows he knows how to have fun, too. The second premiere of the programme, Finale, is pure sunshine, the entire company strolling and gambolling to the Latin-tinged music by Rene Aubry. It made me itch to join in – oh, to be able to cut a dash like that on some holiday dancefloor.j.gilbert independent.co.ukStudio Theatre, London W2 (020 7641 8424), Tue; Wyvern Theatre, Swindon (01793 524 481), Thur; Studio Theatre, Chichester (01243 816 162), 10 Feb; Mac, Birmingham (0121 440 3838), 20-21 Feb; and touring.

Oguike wisely lets the music do the rest.Less restraint was required in the creation of last year’s hit Front Line, set to the furiously rhythmic ninth string quartet of Shostakovich (performed live on stage by the excellent Pavao Quartet). Here the chief fascination lies in seeing which musical details Oguike bids to translate directly, and which to counterpoint Many would be cowed by such complexity – not Oguike. He adds his own percussive element as bare feet slap the floor, or, more chillingly, as dancers’ entire bodies slam against it in a kind of toxic collapse.The title suggests an exercise of bodily risk, and Oguike doesn’t flinch from embracing the private anguish embodied by the score, nor the violent changes of mood as it oscillates between exuberance and a kind of listless Weltschmerz. I loved the wriggly, gossipy movement invented for Charlotte Eatock’s Belinda, and the sheer speed of Nuno Campos’s Mercury.The most memorable touch of all is also the simplest. As Dido’s attendants quietly visit her corpse, one of them gets down on all fours and nudges at her body with his head – a loving, grieving gesture such as a faithful dog might make. The action, too, strikes a judicious balance between putting over a story, and exploring abstract ideas.

She can flash her thighs as the Sorceress and not rouse a titter. And she can stand perfectly still through “When I am laid in earth” and draw snuffles from all over the auditorium.Oguike’s major skill is in sensing when to go full out, and when to hold back. Some of Purcell’s choruses he barely choreographs at all, but simply arranges his characters as sculptures, frozen in exquisite baroque poses. Clearly Oguike is nobody’s product: his style is all his own.
Nonetheless it took courage to tackle Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

The American Mark Morris made a legendary dance version, whose revival with full chorus, orchestra and soloists at ENO is still fairly fresh in the memory. For Oguike, on his lower rung of the ladder, a carefully chosen recording must suffice for the moment (Maria Ewing’s Dido, seductively voiced). But in fact, piped music robs remarkably little from the movement’s emotional punch.Relying only on Guy Hoare’s clever lighting, Oguike’s six dancers succeed in suggesting an entire world of antiquity – a place where queens and warriors are felled by love, where swains and maidens grieve for them, a place where even the weather is at the mercy of good and evil forces. But on the evidence of his latest batch of pieces, distinctiveness is also part of the package. Here is dance that is stuffed with fresh ideas, bristling with personality.