THIS is a thoroughly modern production to match the thoroughly modern £6 million redevelopment of York Theatre Royal, with effectively two shows going on at once. One off stage, one on.

The new seating, with the raked stalls now clasped to the bosom of the dress circle, has a lovely, elegant flow, all the way up to the high-backed seats in the gallery. The stage has lost its rake, although ironically it has regained a slope in Sara Perks's touring set for this Theatre Royal and English Touring Theatre co-production, back home in York from tonight for a final week.

Damian Cruden has always been a progressive artistic director, looking to stretch audience expectations, and so here we have not only "colour-blind casting" but a fluidity of gender too with Shuna Snow playing three men, the stuffed-shirt Bridey Flyte, the wastrel German Kurt and the Canadian moneybags Rex Mottram.

No doubt Cruden will say he is casting whoever best suits the role, and if it means more roles for women, who is to say No. What's more, men played all the females in Shakespeare's day, so this osmosis may well happen more and more, albeit that it has the feel of Weimar cabaret here.

Castle Howard's familiar salmon-pink frame may have featured prominently in the publicity, but you won't see one stone in Sara Perks's design as Cruden steers clear of Downton Abbey gloss. Instead, in tandem with lighting designer Richard G Jones, pre-war Oxford, Brideshead, Venice and Tangiers are evoked by minimal furniture and mobile screens, with cameo appearances by a couple of beds, one for Christopher Simpson's ailing Sebastian, the other for Paul Shelley's Lord Marchmain on his deathbed.

The biggest symbol is the giant cross in the Marchmain chapel, the burden of their Catholicism writ large. The overall effect of this minimalism is to increase the sense of impermanence, a wealthy but weary family crashing against the rocks of a troubling faith.

You may balk at the interjections of non-period microphones, apparently present to signify memories coming into focus. Better by far is the physicality of Charles and Julia's storm-tossed clinch at sea, pulled hither and thither by ropes as their chairs hurtle around the stage.

Brian Ferguson's Charles Ryder is still the sole narrator, and not the most pleasant of chaps it must be said, and as Bryony Lavery's two and a half-hour adaptation becomes more episodic, shedding its earlier abstract coat, it begins to drag like the 1982 television series once the Evelyn Waugh wit fades out and Rosie Hilal's Julia comes to the fore. Like Mercutio, you rather miss the disgraceful Sebastian as the wounds deepen.

Brideshead Revisited revisits York Theatre Royal, tonight until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk