A scene from Women.

Women Beware Women. The jaded may call the title sound advice. But is it enough of a thesis on which to build a play?

Turns out, it comes down to the company that’s performing it. While Constellation Theatre’s current production isn’t working with the most compelling source material out there, the company proves, as it has before, that stylistic choices can go a long way towards fashioning an entertaining piece of theater.

Women, a 17th-century work from Thomas Middletown, is a soapy, melodramatic romp, full of wife-stealing, conniving nobility and the like. Its characters aren’t particularly redeemable, whether it be an incestuous uncle and niece, a scheming heiress, or a young woman who’s ready to cast her new husband aside at the first sign of interest from a duke.

But then again, if art (or at least, media) had a morality requirement, we wouldn’t have any “Real Housewives” spinoffs, would we? Women Beware Women‘s major problem, though, is that once everyone’s done betraying everyone else by the end of the first act, it feels like there’s not much more that can happen to these characters that will prove all that interesting. And for awhile, not much of interest does occur, though the whole thing wraps up in an over-the-top, and undeniably hilarious bloodbath.