Henry VIII, Bridewell Theatre, London

When you hear a mobile phone ring during this Henry VIII, don't turn around and glare – the guilty man is the Tudor tyrant himself. Phil Willmott has not only given the play a contemporary setting; he has chucked out huge chunks of it, rearranged what's left, and added new lines and characters, almost qualifying, along with John Fletcher, for a writing credit on this semi-Shakespearean play. But, while some editing was necessary and desirable – the Bridewell was never going to be a serious contender in the pageantry stakes – his wholesale revamp has drained the life and colour from the play.

Along with the pomp, Willmott has cut much of the politics, as well as the common folk and Archbishop Cramner. (Cardinal Campeius remains, though now, pretending to be a dear old boy, he gets close enough to the court ladies to cop a feel.) The king is first seen in shorts, jogging, and then, demanding who interrupts his "private meditations", is heartily ironic – instead of reading a book, he is wearing boxing gloves and sparring with the Duke of Suffolk. Anne Boleyn, in the original, discussed her future with a lady-in-waiting. Here, she and two other girls primp in a powder room while one of them smirks and teases her. The silent one is a new character, Jessica Brandon, who interviews Cardinal Wolsey for the TV cameras and reports to an off-stage voice (recorded by Trevor McDonald).

Like Sir Trevor, all the actors (barring James Horne's Wolsey) seem to be performing with the aid of some mechanical device, one that makes their delivery pinched and hollow. Much use is made of that old trick of pausing in unexpected and meaningless places. Nor is it easy to distinguish them visually, these young people in suits, all with regular features and slicked-backed hair. As well as creating a strenuously sinister atmosphere (the Duke of Buckingham is arrested on a dark stage, his face caught in the cross of two torch beams), Willmott deflates what poetry remains. Wolsey gives the "long farewell" speech while cleaning out his desk, as if his favourite coffee mug were as important as his loss of career, wealth and reputation. His regret at not having served his God well, divorced from the same scene and following a new one in which he wears a cap and feeds pigeons, ends the play; in its new position it sounds abrupt and flat, as if it's the moral of the story. When Willmott wants sympathy for the rejected, ailing Queen Katherine he puts her in a wheelchair, but such tactics don't work if the characters have inspired no pity or awe.

The cutting, though, inspires a mischievous thought. I'm sure that Willmott made the changes to conform to his vision of a corrupt society. But when one of his omissions is the crooked surveyor who perjures himself to send Buckingham to the block, and one of the sponsors is a firm of chartered surveyors – well, I just hope the Bridewell isn't planning a Macbeth without the porter's scene, brought to you by Distillers.

To 29 June (020-7936 3456)