The big question in Peter Grimes is normally simple: did he or didn't he? But the genius of Phyllida Lloyd's staging of Britten's opera, rightly brought back into Opera North's repertory after less than 18 months, is that you don't need to know what really happened to Grimes's ill-fated apprentices. What matters is the relationship between the man and the mob.

This isn't a production to take in half measures. And, at first, you do wonder whether Lloyd's big gambit - surrendering the stage almost entirely to the cast, who make and unmake the giant fishing net and wooden pallets that comprise the set - smacks a little too much of self-conscious theatricality. It's a particularly risky tactic when extended to the famous sea interludes, which offer no release from Lloyd's relentless vision.

But that vision is so powerful - and so intricately delineated - that I defy anyone not to get completely swept up in it. And by broadening her focus to the entire community, Lloyd homes in on the opera's most troubling message. Can any society that depends on physical closeness and social solidarity afford to tolerate the gawky, threatening fisherman, Peter Grimes? Other villagers are more demonstrably hideous: the greasy, Bible-bashing Bob Boles (the excellent Alan Oke), Roderick Williams's sly Ned Keene, here a drug-pusher, and the slutty nieces of Amy Freston and Claire Booth. The difference is that they all know how to use a crowd, and the crowd knows how to use them.

This is a team effort. Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Grimes (pictured, with Aaron Eastwood as the apprentice John), impassioned and devastatingly vulnerable though he is, has neither the vocal ease nor the dramatic force to dominate his scenes. But, in a way, that's the point; he can neither control nor subdue those around him - not even Giselle Allen's terrific Ellen Orford, whose insistence that she can change Grimes only adds to his resentment and suspicion, culminating in a shocking act of violence. What's both chilling and heart-breaking about Lloyd-Roberts's performance is how plausible that moment is.

There's nowhere to hide from the emotional fallout. In the pit, Richard Farnes ratchets up the tension to stomach-churning heights; the choruses, meanwhile, are bone-chilling in their intensity. And when we reach the end, the catharsis is profoundly disturbing. Sloughed off like dead skin, Grimes's dumbly compliant self-sacrifice wipes the slate clean for the rest. What remains is the community, swaying beneath their net, as enduring - and unforgiving - as the sea itself.

Box office: 0870 1251898. Then touring.

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