Rough justice and cruelty

Measure for Measure
Theatre Royal, Bath
***

Shakespeare wrote nothing more mysterious than Measure for Measure, his tragi-comedy of rough justice and cruelly delayed mercy. Peter Hall's beguiling production, which launches his annual Bath season, attempts to solve the play's enigma variations.

It characterises that monarch-substitute, the Duke, as the embodiment of rule by absolute whim and shady purpose. This fascinating outline idea cries out for development, for performances that bolster this concept, rather than the superficial work of James Laurenson, Richard Dormer and Andrea Riseborough, respectively fighting it out as the Duke, his deputy Angelo and Isabella, the novice for whom both men have the illicit, unreciprocated hots.

Hall conceives Shakespeare's Vienna as a nightmare allegory of Jacobean England under extreme Puritanism's sway. Kevin Rigdon's impressive set reduces the city to an all-black, semi-circular structure, dominated by prison-cell bars, a row of doors that might be from Kafka country and an upper gallery from which people watch. Little light illuminates this joyless world. These black-garbed Puritan citizens in black headwear look all too ready for Angelo's rule of moral terror. The truncated scenes of Mistress Overdone's bawdy brothel society look too subdued, but the Puritan backlash works with a vengeance.

In prison, with his life at stake, Ben Turner's fine, anguished Claudio wears a sack emblazoned with the single word "Fornicator" while Teddy Kempner's vivacious Pimp is similarly branded as "Bawd". Yet Angelo's attempt to subvert his own regime, to corrupt and coerce Isabella into saving her brother's life by sacrificing her virginity, smacks of little shock-value, pathos or power. Dormer's Angelo is shrouded in blandness while Miss Riseborough's Isabella, over which I would sooner draw a thick veil, insulates herself in a vocally strained, emotion-free zone.

She misses out on the religious fervour that goads Isabella. She reacts to the deputy's propositions and sexual assault, when he almost lays her on a desk, with mere, mild distaste.With Claudio she argues her case for chastity like some smug, self-confident blue stocking and brushes off the threat of his death as if it were some local irritant. Laurenson, instead of implying that an urge for absolute power and underhand sexual longings drive the Duke to cruel action, exudes a suave calm. Finally, having seized Isabella in forced marriage, he walks out and leaves Vienna in shocked silence - ruler's power chillingly triumphant.

Various dates (01225 448844).