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Darkness prevails even on entering the auditorium, with the battleship-grey set dimly lit. This is a production where light flickers and is gone.
The stage is flecked with white sails on Venice's waterways and with candles in Belmont, and is more brightly but fleetingly illumined by the princes of Morocco and Spain.
All these images created by Merchant of Venice director Gale Edwards and her design team have striking impact.
But the real heart of their work is in the shockingly memorable scene where Christians gather in vicious taunting of Shylock the Jew - knowing he is returning home to find his daughter, Jessica, has gone with his money.
Desmond Barrit plays him here with a silent but tangible sense of foreboding. And that is matched by the way he seems visibly to shrink as he loses his case against his debtor, Antonio. Barrit's performance is all the more deeply powerful for being unostentatious.
The production has two final, bitter twists in Jessica's abrupt, remorseful flight from the stage - Alexandra Moen making a sharp impact - and in the isolation of Antonio (a rock-like Philip Quast).
Niamh Cusack's Portia moves with a teasingly sinuous languor before showing a nice sense of mischief in man's clothes, but she does not achieve a proper sense of cruelty towards either Shylock or Bassanio.
Indeed, the acting generally does not always sustain the highest level. Ed Stoppard, for example, tends to be swooning of speech as Lorenzo.
So the feeling is of a collection of impressive scenes and images rather than a fully-matured production. But it can become that in time.
