WHEN the caring Lucas, the sole kindergarten teacher in a small rural Danish town, gently reproves the innocent advances of the loveless five-year-old Klara, her hurt feelings unintentionally lead her to accuse him of having indecently exposed himself.

The stiflingly repressed locals readily accept her version of events and they proceed to hound the innocent Lucas (Tobias Menzies). Emotionally inhibited and with his marriage on the rocks, he can only silently communicate his affection for his infant charges, his son and his estranged friends.

He becomes the ready prey of his erstwhile companions, with his bottled-up courage only enraging them further.

David Farr’s adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish prize-winning film necessarily tightens the plot and the emotional impact of Rupert Goold’s production is that much more powerful in consequence.

It captures the inbred, stultified atmosphere of small-town life with monstrous images of antlered deer reflecting the marriage of sexual tension and blood sport.

Es Devlin’s set, a single glass-walled cabin in the centre of a bare rotating platform stage, serves as school office, hunting lodge and church.

It heightens the claustrophobic isolation of a macho society where the members of the hunting guild indulge in bullish ritualistic chanting, heavy drinking and “humour” along the lines of asking each other if, in a world with no women, would they choose to remain celibate or fuck a deer.

Interestingly, where the film is confined by naturalistic cinematography, the theatrical imagery of this excellent production reveals the individual and social stresses simmering below the surface in ways which go beyond the obvious.

Runs until August 3, box office: almeida.co.uk.