The Woman in the Moon, by John Lyly. Rose Theatre, Bankside, London.

Do yourself a favour, and grab the last remaining tickets to the Dolphin's Back production of John Lyly's comic masterpiece. Last Thursday, a sell-out audience grinned, cackled, and glowed with admiration as this talented troupe brought the long-forgotten 16th century gem to life.

John Lyly deserves to be much better known. A bright Kentish Lad, born in 1553 in cosmopolitan Canterbury (which also also spawned Christopher Marlowe eleven years later), Lyly excelled at Magdalen College, Oxford before bursting onto the London literary scene with the publication of Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit (1578), and Euphues and His England (1580). In these prose works, Lyly introduced nothing less than a revolution in the English language, which - in his work at least - made it sparkle with style, irony and wit. By the age of 30, Lyly was widely feted as England's greatest writer, and this reputation did not diminish until well after his death. Indeed, (as James Wallace, director, writes), in his introduction to Shakespeare's First Folio, Ben Jonson places Lyly among the pantheon of England's greatest writers.

The Woman in the Moon is radical - feminising and paganising the origins of the universe; exploring the nature of female character and actions. Dissatisfied with Mother Nature's generation of a perfection to rival their own, the planets decide to derail Pandora's transition into the world. Beginning with Jupiter, and depressive, moody Saturn, each planet's undermining of woman is a chapter itself. We encounter the despondency of Saturnine woman, the belligerence of Martian female,  the allure of Venutian temptress. Each planetary influence is an orchestral movement in its own right, and each somehow brings the person of Pandora to a complex, multivalent completion.

Men in the play are easily-duped, unilinear and comic; wholly dependent upon the mood or whim of womankind. It is interesting, then, that this was a play written with Elizabeth in mind - indeed it is documented that she attended a performance of it by the Paul's Boys. Like Shakespeare's later playwriting for James I, John Lyly was not precious, or consistent in towing a party or royal line; and Lyly's exploration of womanhood was ambiguous and provocative. At the end of the play, Mother Nature asks Pandora to choose the planetary influence she wishes to make permanent; she selects Cynthia (or the Moon) under whose spell she is mad, capricious, indecisive and self-contradictory.

Elizabeth, at the height of her powers in the 1580s, was none of these things; indeed, she would have been disdainful of the character Pandora chooses for women. This raises interesting questions about Elizabeth (whom Lyly would have known well). Was she disdainful of other women, or the modes of femininity approved of in the late 16th century? Which of the planetary influences upon offer would she have recognised in herself - if any? In raising such fundamental questions about female personalities, and doing so so publicly in front of Queen and audience, John Lyly shows a provocative confidence - cockiness even.

Though the themes of the play run deep, the script is light, funny, fast-moving. The Dolphin's Back troupe did a wonderful job balancing deep, dangerous themes with light, saucy gags, and the result was ninety minutes of theatrical bliss. As Pandora, Bella Heesom took us on a dazzling journey through conflicting expressions of womanhood - a bravura performance, which showed amazing adaptability and inventiveness. Those playing the hapless men in the play worked to great comic effect, with James Askill again a joy to behold, and a name to watch out for. The great male foil in this was the crafty but appealing Gunophilus, who was entertainingly played by James Thorne. This was very much an ensemble production, however, and in a way it is unfair to mention particular names. Bravo to all.

The Dolphin's Back is a superb group of creatives, who have skill, wit and depth - from James Wallace's direction, to the quick, fun-loving cast, to inventive stage design and lighting. The DB are committed to resurrecting neglected scripts, and bringing them to life for modern audiences - and they do it with authority and a great sense of fun. As such, Dolphin's Back are my favourite troupe - and I can't wait to see them again in the Massacre at Paris. (Spoiler alert - it's brilliant.)

The Massacre at Paris, by Christopher Marlowe, Rose Theatre, London.

The Massacre at Paris concerns the horrific events around St Batholomew's Day in August 1572, when tensions between Catholics and Protestants blew French society apart. In three days of carnage, Catholic mobs slaughtered over three thousand men, women and children in the streets of Paris. As the massacres spread out across the country, a further ten thousand people were murdered in other cities around France.

This ethnic cleansing was the most shocking outrage of the time, and sent tremors throughout a Europe riven by confessional tensions. Christopher Marlowe was only eight years old at the time of the massacre, but he would have experienced its aftermath at close quarters, as Huguenot refugees from the continent flooded into his home town of Canterbury. Such events and their consequences are all too familiar to us nowadays, of course.

As a Cambridge Uni spy working in the wake of the massacre, Marlowe probably knew people who had witnessed the bloodbath first hand. By the time he had grown up, the event had reconfigured England's security and foreign policies; and it is no coincidence that, as a young adult, Marlowe himself was involved in a spying mission in a Catholic seminary in Rheims. In his later guise as a playwright, Marlowe saw the potential appeal of a play on the subject, and drew on his knowledge of those three days and their aftermath to write the Massacre at Paris. Nowadays you would file the play alongside movies like The Hurt Locker, Hotel Rwanda and 9/11; and it suffers the same pitfalls as more recent post-genocide dramas - how to manage political bias; how to weave in emotions other than horror and outrage; how to portray violence in a way that does not become slasher porn. The Massacre does not successfully surmount these problems - but really, how could it?

That said, it is an important example of theatre being used for the consideration of serious current events. At the time of its composition, Elizabethan guidelines on theatre - upheld by the Master of the Revels - proscribed controversies about religion, or the portrayal of living, or recently living, people. Marlowe's play brazenly flouted both of these conventions, and he got away with it. Perhaps the reason for this, is that Marlowe had produced a powerful piece of anti-Catholic propaganda - one very much in tune with the ongoing religious persecutions in England. An uncharitable reading of Marlowe's Massacre is that it is not a piece of liberal hand-wringing about genocide - but is instead a highly politicised demonisation of England's papist Enemy Within. The play thus stands as a problematic example of media bias in times of ethnic strife.

So, bravo to The Dolphin's Back and the Rose Theatre for tackling this troubling text. The Rose was the first theatre to be built south of the Thames. Erected by impressario, Philip Henslowe, in 1587, it premiered all of Marlowe's plays, with great actors such as Edward Alleyne pounding the boards. This couldn't have been a more different production to the brilliant one man show of Faustus I saw at the Rose last month, starring Christopher Staines. Here we got full ensemble, great costumes and a huge dose of collective enthusiasm.

The Director, James Wallace, was faced with a highly problematic task, not simply in terms of subject matter, but in terms of the patchy text that has survived to today. He dealt with some more pedestrian passages cleverly, allowing them to provide naturalistic, somewhat modern, reprieves from the more ornate language. I found the uses of plain demotic, as in "Come. Let's go" (Exeunt) refreshingly direct. No rhyme. No clever twist or barb. Fine.

The direction was great throughout, with inventive use made of the wide open spaces behind the stage. The acting was terrific, with each of the cast committed and convincing. Four performances stood out for me. Kristin Milward was chillingly charismatic as the manipulating Catherine de Medici. John Gregor carried the narrative and much of the action with an intense study of the evil, ambitious Duke of Guise; a man obsessed with Caesar, embodying perverted religiosity. Lachlan McCall played the aggrieved, protestant leader, Henry, King of Navarre with infectious, heroic charisma. For me, McCall's performance highlighted the resemblance between the King of Navarre and the later figure of Shakespeare's Henry V. There is little doubt that the Bard of Avon will have seen a production of the Massacre, so maybe there is indeed some of Marlowe's Navarre in the later Henry. James Askill, meanwhile, gave a clever and highly entertaining portrayal of the Duke of Anjoy's journey from murderous brat to dissolute king - a really wonderful performance that reminded me of Peter Ustinov's Nero, and was none the worse for that.

Overall, then, the play was superb, inspiring and insightful, not just about Elizabethan times, but our own. I don't believe in star rating systems, but if I had one, I would give the Dolphin's Back production of the Massacre at Paris five stars. Well done to all involved. And if you haven't already got a ticket . . . well what are you waiting for?

The Massacre at Paris by Christopher Marlowe runs at the Rose Theatre, Bankside until 29th March. You can book your tickets here:
http://www.rosetheatre.org.uk/events/event/the-massacre-at-paris-by-christopher-marlowe/