Presiding over chaos, a political leader hands power over to his deputy who turns out to be a secret lecher. Given that is the nub of Measure for Measure, you could easily turn it into a topical, Blair-age satire. But that is not Peter Hall's way and in this soberly beautiful production, which kicks off his annual Bath residency, he is far more concerned to explore the contradictions in any system of crime and punishment.
Staged in Puritan costume against a circular steel cage, Hall's production has few visual tricks. Its supreme virtue is that it makes you listen to the text with heightened awareness; and what you notice is the extent to which James Laurenson's imposing Duke is subjecting Angelo to a rigorous moral examination. He knows from the start that his deputy is a rank hypocrite; and the evidence is all there in the scene where the Duke explains to Isabella how "this well-seeming Angelo" treated his intended bride with "unjust unkindness". The scene acquires real urgency in Hall's production.
But what clearly fascinates Hall is the paradoxical nature of justice. I've never noticed before that Angelo tears down the suburban brothels but leaves inner-city ones intact because "a wise burgher put in for them". And Laurenson, having shown the Duke to be a shrewd, self-controlled figure, causes civic dismay when he proposes to Isabella. The shock is all the greater here since Laurenson is struck in years and Andrea Riseborough's Isabella is exceptionally youthful. What is always a jarring moment produces a stunned, disbelieving silence at the revelation that even the wisest judge contains some deep moral flaw.
Hall's production also implies the play is partly about the gradual corruption of Isabella. The excellent Riseborough starts out as an impetuous novice craving more religious restraints; but you feel she is soiled not so much by Angelo's sexual overtures as by her complicity in the Duke's dirty tricks. When the Duke explains how Mariana will take her place in Angelo's bed, Riseborough glowingly announces: "The image of it gives me content already." Isabella becomes the play's real fallen angel, displacing Richard Dormer's conventional Angelo, who lacks the kind of appalled self-realisation seen in Complicite's recent production.
But there is a very good Lucio from Michael Mears, who plays him as a drawling rumour-monger. Teddy Kemper as a breezily unapologetic Bawd and Barry Stanton as an impotently liberal Escalus also lend vital support. The virtue of the evening, however, is that it makes you listen hard. What Shakespeare really seems to be saying is that, given human frailty, all earthly justice is a mockery and a charade.
· In rep until August 12. Box office: 01225 448844.
