The Turn of the Screw, King's Theatre, Edinburgh

Something wicked this way dances

The word "serialism" is certain to frighten audiences away, and the people at Aldeburgh have been obliged to avoid it, I am told. But Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw is a serial opera – admittedly with a 12-note row designed automatically to generate familiar harmonies and keys. Britten understood the opera's title as a description of his musical techniques, just as much as the increasing psychological tension of the characters. It is, in fact, a highly schematic work.

With its impenetrable riddles, its singing ghosts and its absence of lyricism (apart from the nursery tunes), it seems an unlikely candidate for popularity, yet it has become one of Britten's most popular operas. So popular, in fact, that it is now a candidate for "abstract" productions. Luc Bondy's version for the Aix-en-Provence Festival, transferred to the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, has no lake, no tower, no garden, and the manor of Bly is reduced to a series of white walls and pillars that shift around and crowd into claustrophobic huddles. The sets are by Richard Peduzzi, and Moidele Bickel's costumes have the children in white, the adults in black and the ghosts in ectoplasmic silver-grey. Like Britten's music, it is all deeply schematic and intellectual.

Nevertheless, Bondy is always one for clever insights. After the colloquy of Quint and Miss Jessel, the two children throw a sheet over them and lay in place two wreaths; the churchyard scene then becomes a kind of requiem. In the very last scene, Quint enters as a dancing master and treads a gesturing minuet to the rhythm of Britten's passacaglia, a chillingly sinister moment.

The playing of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra – an offshoot of Claudio Abbado's Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester – was lucid and anonymous, under Daniel Harding's on-the-dot conducting. The two children were truly excellent, George Hicks singing Miles in a voice that was all innocence, Pippa Woodrow as Flora looking and sounding much older than the character's eight years; in fact, this young voice is already expressive and handsome.

Hanna Schaer was a powerful, panicked Mrs Grose; the two ghosts contrasted strongly, Marlin Miller as a mean, mocking Quint whose other-worldly melismas sounded almost rancid, Marie McLaughlin as a warm-voiced, sexy Miss Jessel with inviting décolletage and mop of tousled hair, a witch ripe for the ducking stool.

But this opera hinges on the part of the Governess. Mireille Delunsch sounded pallid and thin, as though she were herself a child, and she moved without conviction. It created an odd imbalance. This was a show in which Hicks, Woodrow and Schaer had got something going, but Delunsch was their bewildered victim. That was presumably not part of Bondy's scheme, and it proves that you can't plan everything.