What a vexing novel this is for anyone adapting it for the stage. Richly written and doused with passions that simmer for decades, Emily Brontë's novel is a gift and poisoned chalice in equal measure for director Mark Babych. He's to be applauded for a production that has a stunning, stark beauty and a thrilling sense of connection between his brooding Heathcliff (Robert Vernon) and ethereal Cathy (Rosie Holt).

But it's a frustrating whole. Some moments are exquisite, capturing the lives played out against the unforgiving moors – Heathcliff and Cathy roll down them together, entangled in a passionate embrace – while others are overblown, and feel melodramatic. The use of microphones for some lines is a mistake – leaning towards sensationalism, but the scenes played without them, in Lucy Gough's plucky adaptation, are darkly gripping.

It's well acted: Jenny Livsey is outstanding as omnipotent Nelly, a witness to everything and the story's moral compass, and Vernon's Heathcliff captures the complex, wild forces that make him so violent in everything he does. Hannah Clark's set cleverly allows for both claustrophobic domestic interiors by the hearth and the dangerously free space of the moors where Cathy roams in life and after.

They key is whether we believe in the bond between Heathcliff and Cathy, and the vicious cruelty meted out because of it in all its twisted ramifications. That's in place, and affectingly handled, but this is a novel that needs underplaying to tame its wild heart into something we can identify with. Allow it to run free at its more sensational moments – Cathy crying "Let me in" at the window, her voice booming through the auditorium – and it can slip into self-indulgence.