Suddenly Last Summer, Albery Theatre, London

Michael Grandage's superb production of Suddenly Last Summer begins with a coup de théâtre that looks and sounds like a monumental pun on the idea of opening a can of worms.

Michael Grandage's superb production of Suddenly Last Summer begins with a coup de théâtre that looks and sounds like a monumental pun on the idea of opening a can of worms. To the clang of unnerving metallic blows the great iron drum of Christopher Oram's brilliant set splits apart to reveal the wondrously morbid arena for this short and shocking play by Tennessee Williams. We are made privy to the garden of a New Orleans mansion where the writhing trees and the almost obscenely fleshy, insectivorous flowers are an emblem of the fate of their late cultivator - Sebastian, the globe-trotting aesthete and versifier who met a terrible end at the hands (and the consuming mouths) of the needy youths he had sexually exploited on one of his many jaunts.

He had been accustomed to travel round the ritziest of circuits with his mother, Violet - posing as a glamorous star couple (her unspoken role to use her pulling power to procure for him). But suddenly last summer, he decided to take his troubled, psychologically damaged young cousin, Catharine, as a replacement. Result; disaster. The claustrophobic power of the drama derives in part from the fact that we never see Sebastian (a convention titillatingly half-violated in the movie version). Instead, he's a bleached bone of current contention. Fearing that her son's reputation will be besmirched by Catharine's reports of his end, Violet is bent on persuading handsome young Dr Cukrowicz to lobotomise the girl - the inducement a hefty grant for his medical research projects. Will Catharine get the chance to articulate her side of the story?

In the role of Violet, Diana Rigg effects an astonishingly complete and compelling transformation. Waving a stick and decked out in a white wig, she plays Violet as a game old bird of prey. With her growly Southern-dowager accent and her infectious, rascally cackle of triumph and self-assertion (as when she successfully makes it down a flight of stairs), Rigg's splendid Violet seems to be driven by a terrific malign energy. It's as though, in order to save her son's name she has managed to summon up enough will-power not just to quell, but to mock the opposition. The movie version has her finally subsiding into the Sunset Boulevard fantasy that the Doctor is Sebastian redivivus. The connection does not need to be spelt out here, as Violet subjects Mark Bazeley's golden-haired, decent-yet-calculating medic to a faintly poignant flirtation.

Having set the pace beautifully, Rigg hands over the baton of centrality to Victoria Hamilton who brings her extraordinary talent for emotional truth and transparency to the tricky role of Catharine. She communicates piercingly the baffled free spirit in her character. Jittery, vulnerable, yet capable of flicks of humour that demonstrate how, even in her custodial plight, she has more flexibility of soul than her "normal" family and she ends up relaying the story of Sebastian's end with the thrilling, haunted momentum of someone who feels nightmarishly pursued by the memory of it.

Howard Harrison's lovely lighting design and subtle tonal shifts in Adam Cork's music and sound score give shape, definition - and mystery - to a drama that, as presented here, you would never feel inclined to dismiss as lurid Grand Guignol.

Booking to 31 July (0870 060 6621)