Troilus and Cressida by Shakespeare, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford upon Avon.

SELDOM have the feet of Greece's ancient heroes been revealed as flaky as their pectorals are perky.

Usually a first-class degree in the classics is required to steer one safely through Shakespeare's complex and cruel satire on the prolonged war, which destroyed Troy. Never was so much lost for what has been famously described as the vengeance of a cuckold upon a whore.

In trusting the text to its last sexual innuendo, Ian Judge has delivered an epic production, which is at once bold and funny, sexy and heroic, preposterous and tragic. It is an evening gilded with glittering performances, the entire mood being set by Richard McCabe's outrageously gossipy Prologue. It is sealed by Clive Francis's queenly Pandarus vicariously enjoying his lascivious match making. No sooner do the godlike princes of Troy parade beneath Cressida's window in all their warlike splendour than they are at once disrobed to the buff for a ritual rugby club steam bath.

Nor do the legends of Greece's greatness come off any better. Without distorting a word of the text, Edward de Souza's imperious Agamemnon is a huffy old monument to offended dignity while Ross O'Hennessy turns Ajax into a muscle-bound, thicko refugee from the Gladiators. Philip Quast's proud Achilles sulks petulantly in his silken tent with his blond himbo Patroclus (Jeremy Sheffield).

Yet for all its vainglorious homo-erotic overtones, the play's true heart exists wondrously in the quality casting of the title roles. There can be no doubt that Joseph Fiennes and Victoria Hamilton are two of the most exciting, charismatic and sensual young actors of their generation. Fiennes brings to the rampant machismo of the Trojan brother-hood a genuine sensitivity and passion, while few can match Hamilton's delicate ardour and bubbling sense of mischief sacrificed in the cause of war.

That among all the plottings and posturings of elders and bitters these two true spirits should be so betrayed is the play's great tragedy, giving rise to its vigorously staged and awesome bloodbath.