The plays of Jean Paul Sartre used to be famous but not often performed (except for Huis Clos). Now they are no longer famous, and a revival is a very rare thing indeed. The Oxford student company Kiwi Productions deserve our gratitude, therefore, for introducing us last week to the many excellencies of Crime Passionnel, which appears not to have been seen here (The Oxford Times's cuttings library suggests) since 1954, six years after its first performance in France (as Les Mains Sales).

Neglect of the play is partly attributable to Sartre himself, who banned productions from 1952 after it was judged to be anti-communist. Some might still find it so. As with all of this writer/philosopher's work, the situations it presents are far from simple and the actions of all its characters open to various interpretations, by themselves as by others. None is given to more soul-searching over his motives (not that he would acknowledge such a thing as a soul) than the idealistic Hugo, the central character of this noirish thriller, set in a fictional European state in the last months of the Second World War.

He is a young intellectual, leading a life committed to "the Party". When it says jump, he jumps. What the party is now saying, through the coldly efficient Olga (Charlotte Cox), is that he must assassinate leading light Hoerderer who is preparing to betray the party's ideals by agreeing to a power-sharing deal with the country's aristocratic and liberal parties. For the 'traitor' - a charismatic working-class hero in the mould, say, of a Nye Bevan - this is a matter of political reality understandable to anyone not entirely absorbed in political theory. Here, then, is a fight between pragmatism and principle, which is brilliantly explored in a thrilling scene between the two men.

There were fine performances from the actors in both roles. Nicolas Bishop, with an appropriate Scottish accent, managed to suggest both Hoerderer's formidable intellect and warm love of mankind, and, indeed, of womankind, for he stirs the passions of his would-be assassin's wife (Claire Palmer) with fatal consequences. Jack Farthing, as the more coldly calculating but infinitely more fragile Hugo, brought an intensity, intelligence and insight to his acting reminiscent of Simon McBurney in the early days of Complicite. I should love to see his Hamlet - like Hugo a character who (as Richard Eyre has said) grows up to grow dead. Director Sarah Branthwaite, although permitting occasional longueurs in the first half, maintained the powerful impetus of the piece, which was always lucid in a new translation by Kitty Black. At times, perhaps, it was a little too new. When Hugh told his wife, "Leave it, Jessica; leave it," the impression was more EastEnders than Eastern Europe.