Oxford's student thesps are venturing boldly into X-certificate territory this week, with a play about the Marquis de Sade at the OFS Studio and that trusty old shocker Tis Pity She's a Whore at Wadham.

The latter is presented in a (well-acted) version very different from the traditional, with John Ford's blood-drenched three-hour Jacobean tragedy clocking in at just 50 minutes.

Its 16-strong cast (plus bandits) is reduced to eight, one of whom - Jack Farchy's Friar - appears only on screen, dispensing advice to a caller as a TV Agony Uncle. A programme note refers to it as "a sharp short shock of a play" - and that seems to me to do very nicely.

The modern-dress performance takes place on a stage contained within a border of pages torn from porn mags. These were disdainfully ignored, following cursory glances, by all members of the audience. Impossible to avoid, however, are the full-frontal couplings shown on a television screen. This is a neat device by director Sam Pritchard to suggest the activities taking place simultaneously on the Emin-style bed in front of it.

First up are Giovanni (the excellent Matt Orton, pictured) and Annabella (the very watchable Charlotte Bayley). The fact that they are brother and sister is at once the big shock feature of the play and the mainspring of the plot. Giovanni's irresistible urge to bed sis had been the subject of his agonised call to the Friar. Once he gives into temptation, Annabella proves herself just as eager a sinner.

But in the days before condoms - which useful prophylactics, incidentally, were controversially used to promote this production - accidents were likely to happen, and one duly happens here. She quickly marries her long-time suitor Soranzo in the hope this will authenticate her pregnancy, but his immediate discovery of her state provokes a jealous fury - chillingly done by Ben Arnold - and a determination for revenge.

His odious lieutenant Vasques (Will Cudmore) is able to sweet-talk her confidante Putana (Charlotte Norris) into revealing the identity of the father-to-be, for which assistance she pays with her life (not her eyesight, as Ford specified). Knowing that the game is up, Giovanni kills Annabella and - er, that's it. No appearance at the feast, waving her heart aloft; no murder of Soranzo; no death for Giovanni himself. All the better for that, some might say - and at least we were out well in time for dinner and with no very unpleasant memories to put us off it.

The play continues until tomorrow.