The annual visits of Music Theatre Wales to the Oxford Playhouse have long been not-to-be-missed events, and thus it proved again last week when this ground-breaking company brought its new production — the first in the UK — of Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony. Adapted from a story by Franz Kafka, with libretto by Rudolph Wurlitzer, this harrowing 80-minute work focuses on themes surrounding crime and punishment, with much to say, or at any rate imply, about the moral equivalence that can exist between the actions of an executioner and those of his victim.

The setting is an island penal colony belonging to an unnamed state where the new Commander has invited a Visitor (tenor Michael Bennett) to witness an execution. This is to be carried out by an Officer (baritone Omar Ebrahim) on a Condemned Man (Gerald Tyler, in a silent role), who is unaware either of his conviction or of the appalling fate that awaits him.

The nauseating details of the torture to come are gleefully disclosed to the Visitor by the Officer, who has also been judge and jury in the case. Revealed, too, is the scant attitude to justice of the old order he represents: for the defendant to speak in his defence would be pointless, the Officer argues, since he would only lie. He says: “The principle on which I base my decision is that guilt is beyond doubt. That is how it is with the old Commander. The new I have managed to resist.”

With three performers of similar appearance involved — bearded, balding, middle-aged — director Michael McCarthy appeared to be saying something about inter-changeability in the roles presented.

The singers and players were all miked. This at once ensured the audibility and intelligibility of the words being sung, while permitting conductor Michael Rafferty to propel the piece to a shattering climax, as the five-strong string band — seemingly oblivious to the repetitive nature of their work — slogged away at the urgent ostinatos so typical of the composer’s oeuvre.