Medea, Actors of Dionysus, Chapel Studio Theatre, College of Ripon and York St John, York, tonight, 7.30pm, box office 01904 623568; Ampleforth College, Ampleforth, February 2, 8pm, box office 01439 766 738. On tour until March 28.

YORK classical theatre company Actors of Dionysus last staged Euripides's tale of revenge and all-consuming love in 1996 as a smouldering horror show, with a raging Tamsin Shasha in the title role.

This new Medea swaps heat and volcanic eruption for ice and drowning water, as director David Stuttard trims his translation to the very bone and transfers the setting to the late-19th century - another time of upheaval and repression for women - for a chilling psychological Victorian melodrama.

Traded in by husband Jason for a younger model with financial assets, Shasha's scorned and still fixated Medea is writhing in gradually mounting mental turmoil, a state signified by her Victoria skirt and jacket being reminiscent of a straitjacket. As in the 1996 show, she is sexy and vulnerable yet is now a more subtly manipulative and deceitful figure, spinning the web of mind games in a Victorian children's nursery, designed by Duncan Woodward-Hay with climbing frames that double as the bars of a mental institution.

Painted the colour of storm clouds, the four pieces of domestic furniture move on wheels, enabling the cast to re-assemble them in choreographed movement that has the effect of motion sickness. The influence of choreographic advisor Thea Nerissa Barnes, in Bacchae and now Medea, has added an exciting new dimension, complementing Stuttard's gift for memorable language. Interestingly, too, the disturbing strings of Philip Glass and others serve as a musical equivalent of a Greek chorus, as post-modern meets ancient tradition.