A FEW weeks after Hallowe'en, the RSC brings us a play based on trickery - a widow is conned out of her fortune by a supposed messenger from purgatory and a farmer loses his hens to a honey-tongued fraudster, to name but two of Pedro's plots.

But the biggest trick of all is played on us the audience: we are lulled into thinking this turn of the 17th century Spanish Golden Age play by Miguel Cervantes (creator of Don Quixote) is great drama by the theatrical wizardry of RSC actors.

They extract much wit and wisdom from some very wordy chunks of rhyming verse, delivered with the expected RSC confidence, precision and meaningfulness. And the company imbues a kind of timeless joy and charm into what are not very original characters or plots, though it has to be said that the piece has been quite cleverly translated from the Spanish.

The episodic nature of Pedro's life, as it takes him on his chequered journey with royalty, peasants, actors, civic dignitaries, gypsies and shepherds, is very suited to RSC production, with actors and musicians making an alternative 'audience' at the back of the stage, seamlessly joining the action to play one of their many parts, then, like us, becoming observers.

And the play, directed by Mike Alfreds, uses a thrust stage, the aisles and asides to cajole us into absorption, then wonder - but not until we leave the auditorium - why we feel we're being so well entertained.

* Pedro is repeated on Thursday and Friday. Box office: 0870 905 5060.

Published: 22/11/2004