In an age where studio theatre is equated with intimacy, how exciting it is to be back at the Riverside Studios where the name is synonymous with two of the capital's most epic spaces. These chilly, high-ceilinged rooms have often played host to some of our most innovative and challenging theatremakers. And so it proves again with this production by a brand-new classical company, Concentric Circles, whose no less exciting arrival this staging heralds.

While the company was due to launch with Colin Firth taking the title role in Hamlet, subsequently regretfully shelved owing to the star's film commitments, they are to be applauded for the rigour with which they've applied themselves instead to a far less commercial and more difficult choice. Racine's Phaedra is hard work at the best of times. The pitfalls are many - not least because drama critics are forever pointing out how much more effective it is in the original French - but also because of the relentless formality of its language in any tongue, and the alien emotion of its subject.

It's difficult to become involved, yet alone passionate, in its story, despite the fact that it's about an all-consuming passion - that of a woman, Phaedra, for her stepson, Hippolytus. This classic story, based on Euripides' Hippolytus, has him rejecting her because he is already in love with Aricia. But it really is hard to care.

That's despite the fire and fury of a performance wracked in despair from Sheila Gish, who is increasingly coming to resemble Bette Davis in full melodramatic vein. This is a role that was most recently taken, with gravely brooding finesse, by Diana Rigg in the Almeida staging at the Albery; Gish pours more naked emotion into it.

Christopher Fettes's otherwise soberly measured production - beautifully designed by Agnes Treplin with walls streaked in blood - surrounds Gish with a terrific ensemble, true to this new company's ideals which are to nurture the development of young actors by forging collaborations between them and senior members of the acting profession.

Those aims are entirely to be applauded. So is this finely formal production. In welcoming such high ambitions and standards, however, my ultimate resistance is to do with the play itself.

- Mark Shenton