It tells the story of a widow who incarcerates her five daughters for eight years of mourning following the death of her not-so-beloved husband, and it is a blistering comment on the legacy of patriarchy, Catholicism, rigid class structures and suppressed desire.

This is a play that burns from the inside out as aridity clashes with fecundity in the remorseless Spanish heat. Not that you’d know it here.

Just about everything in this production is wrong.

From the perspex dolls’ house set and the cool blue lighting to the performances, there is never a sense of the dangerously bottled passion or the tyranny of the widow Bernarda’s implacable diktats.

As played by Harriet Walter, Bernarda is a wraith of a woman who dominates her daughters but also seems to be losing control from the start. Thus the crisis – when it comes as a result of male intervention – loses much of its heat and fury.

In spite of some spirited performances – Isis Hainsworth as the youngest daughter Adela, Eileen Nicholas as delusional grandma Maria Josefa and Thusitha Jayasundera as Poncia, Bernarda’s housekeeper – it is far too detached to stir the blood.

Adaptor Alice Birch liberally seasons the dialogue with the F word in a literal attempt to emphasise the underlying carnality.

But the usually unseen figure of local stud Pepe (James McHugh) – who conducts a languid liaison with one of the daughters – has the opposite effect of what is intended, lowering the temperature rather than raising it.

Over-directed and underwhelming, it looks like a passionate Catholic play directed by a purse-lipped Puritan.

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