Ted Brellisford, the Hamilton Spectator From left, Bruce Edwards as John Hall, Ena Roosimagi as Elizabeth Hall, and Elaine Hale as Susanna Hall, in The Herbal Bed.

"How can you lie to God when he knows everything?"

That powerful line from Peter Whelan's period play The Herbal Bed defines the conundrum facing handsome Rafe Smith and his cunning lover Susanna Hall.

Based on historical fact, but liberally embellished by fiction, this tale of a sensual woman locked in a passionless marriage has at its heart a sense of awakening feminism.

Of course it is wrong to attribute such modern thinking to an era obviously defined by masculine control. No matter, Whelan employs this and other intriguing devices to give his Jacobean drama vital conduit to our modern world. Through elegant, insightful dialogue he almost gets past the play's ho-hum moral philosophizing.

When I first saw this play at London's Duchess Theatre I was bored rigid, finding it long and tedious.

Well, it's still pretty long in Waterdown, where director Arlene Carson has breathed welcome life into its troubled, yet beating heart.

Truth to tell, it's a better production than the Royal Shakespeare Company mustered from Whelan's tale of fomenting sexual attraction.

Thankfully Carson has liberated the play from the confines of moral debate taking us into the heart and mind of Susanna Hall.

She has forged too, compelling portraits of Hall's caring, but sexually cool husband John, and her would-be lover, troubled Rafe Smith.

Elaine Hale is superb as the reckless but clever Susanna, creating an indelible portrait of a woman trapped in a world that denies the vastness of her imagination.

Andrew Dundass contributes restless sexuality, suggesting the frustration of morally troubled Rafe.

Forging a final and important link is sympathetic Bruce Edwards, creating a suitably priggish but likable John Hall.

Young Nicole Bedford is riveting as the Hall's servant girl Hester Fletcher. Ena Roosimagi and Ken Redish are effective in smaller, supporting roles.

Sadly, Andrew Huisman fails to suggest anything of accuser Jack Lane's interior frustration, playing a most unconvincing, swaggering drunk scene that robs the play of important danger. That's something echoed too in George Thomas's overwrought image of "inquisitor" Barnabus Goche.

Helen Davie and Linda Posthuma's costumes are so beautifully manufactured it's all but impossible to tell those borrowed from Stratford from ones made locally.

Alison Carson's attractive 1613 setting, and Janet Hatfield's appropriate props, add veracity to what amounts to a stimulating evening of theatre.