TO say this Chaste Maid was on the cheap side would be like saying Liberace's taste was a little brash. It must rank as one of the single worst pieces of theatre I've seen.

The fact that it was a production by an associate director of the acclaimed Almeida Theatre, London, simply beggars belief. It was a trespass of the eye, of the ear and of the brain.

Take the set - please. Consisting of a large shower curtain and a gold-beaded curtain, for no apparent reason, it was matched only in vulgarity and pointlessness by the costumes.

These included variously a Georgian-type dress and wig, leather trousers and boots, an Edwardian jacket, while one actor was dressed as Sid Vicious. And at least two of the actors were unintelligible.

I have some sympathy. The minor bawdy 17th century satire, by Thomas Middleton, is justly obscure being crude, unfunny, with a multitude of characters which soon left me baffled.

But director Ben Harrison decided to take it further downmarket by having male characters grab their crotches with a frequency which would bring tears to Michael Jackson's eyes.

Oh, and just to hit home Middleton's point that human beings in London at this time were so many pieces of meat, the stage is festooned with, er, pieces of meat.

I counted a couple of laughs. Almeida? Al-murder, more like.

PW