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Guernica

MICHAEL Grandage's production of Edward II is nothing short of a cultural phenomena.

The Crucible auditorium is the third largest theatre space in Britain, and yet every single seat for the entire three week run has been sold. In the city which spawned a revolution in British film making with The Full Monty, we are now seeing a revolution in the theatre. Two decades of financial strangulation of the arts are slowly being exorcised, and Britain's regional companies are being allowed to breathe again.

Sheffield is leading the way. Last year's As You Like It wrested four prestigious awards from London theatre critics renowned for their West End parochialism and the success of Edward II overshadows any regional achievement of the last 25-years.

Naturally, the presence of screen heartthrob Joseph Fiennes is a big sell, but Edward II has done more than showcase a film star, it has put theatre on the map again as a vibrant, living art form to compete with cinema, pop music and the internet. The buzz around this production has made a seat for the Crucible auditorium the hottest ticket in town, and the extraordinary thing about the show is not just that it has put 'bums on seats', but that it has done so with artistic integrity intact.

Fiennes turned down a £1million film role to take the part of Edward. It was a brave move for a man who has not trod the boards since his ascension to Hollywood stardom in films like Shakespeare In Love and Elizabeth. It has paid off in spectacular fashion.

Fiennes plays the vilified King with resonance. He is an actor with mind and body perfectly attuned, his physicality bringing Marlowe's voice to life. He dances colourfully and covorts provocatively with his minion Gaveston, he shrinks and cowers from the nobles, he slowly deflates as his power is sucked from him, finally appearing gaunt and mud besplattered at his gruesome execution.

Marlowe's grasp of the tension between sex and politics makes Edward II resonantly topical when set against a backdrop of Section 28 and a succession of revelations about the private lives of ministers. But the nobles resent Edward's dalliance with Gaveston not so much for its brazen homosexuality, but because Gaveston is 'base born'.

For Gaveston, see Christine Keeler and Monica Lewinsky. For Edward, see John Profumo and Bill Clinton. One irresistibly imagines the scene in which Fiennes reluctantly resigns his crown being played out between Tony Blair and Peter Mandleson in Downing Street. "And yet, methinks I have committed no offence," says Mandleson ruefully.

James D'Arcy makes an outstanding debut as an emergent, confrontational Gaveston whose delight in provocation sets up sex as transgressive and threatening to hetero-hegemony. Jamie Sives plays the murderer Lightborn with eerie insouciance and Lloyd Owen is a domineering Mortimer.

But the real star is the director. Michael Grandage uses the spare stage with tenacity, instigating a cavalcade of movement and activity offset by some wonderful moments of stasis.

He elicits verve in his actors' dialogue which injects a thrilling dynamism to the Elizabethan verse. He uses light as scenery and creates visual spectaculars with minimal aid from props. When the black clad nobles pounce, Edward and Gaveston are enveloped in a writhing Bacchanalian carnival of golden clad boys.

For all its politics and power struggles, however, Edward II is ultimately a tragic love story and Grandage recognises this with some tender touches.

"Why should you love him whom the world hates so," Edward is asked, and, desperately clinging to his crown, he replies, "Because he loves me more than all the world." For a supposedly dying art form, Edward II is a glorious injection of new life.