How Sir Kenneth Branagh must have racked his brains to find actors to play the tragic young lovers in his West End Shakespeare revival. Richard Madden... well, as Robb Stark in Game Of Thrones he certainly has experience of weddings going lethally wrong, not to mention having already played Romeo for Shakespeare’s Globe in 2007. Lily James... anyone who can get called “sex on legs” by the Radio Times for playing in Downton Abbey has a head start, not to mention her turn as Natasha in this year’s BBC-TV War And Peace. Crucially, though, these two played the Prince and Cinderella in the recent Disney live-action film directed by... er, Kenneth Branagh. Right-ho, carry on, as you were.

In short, they have both experience and box-office clout in the romantic-icon department. Which may be just as well, since Branagh and Rob Ashford’s production here really doesn’t kindle any sparks. James is diligent in trying to play Juliet’s youth (the character isn’t even 14, after all), but she expends so much effort on this that she loses sight of Juliet’s rapid journey towards sad understanding. For me this is a crucial strand of the play, and when it’s missing, the rest has to be worked harder.

In the event, it’s worked louder. Many of the actors get too wrapped up in trying to deliver the blank verse “properly”: when they try to add the characters’ emotions to this, things simply get shouty. Even Sir Derek Jacobi, with his immense Shakespearean experience, falls prey to this once or twice. Jacobi, though, has a prior hurdle to clear: he’s cast as Mercutio, Romeo’s flippant, motormouthed friend, despite being 48 years older than the actor playing Romeo. So Mercutio gets reimagined as a kind of naughty uncle figure, but in practice it’s a distraction rather than a fertile idea. Only Meera Syal as Juliet’s Nurse gives a natural, engaging performance.

In fact, there are precious few decent ideas in the production. The notion of dressing the cast in the style of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and adding a few Latin-lounge musical numbers doesn’t really go anywhere, and every other wheeze is good for a moment or so but they don’t build together to any real effect. It’s almost heresy to say this of Branagh when so many of his career landmarks an actor and director have been Shakespearean... but, on stage at least, he doesn’t seem all that hot at directing the Bard. Like his production of The Winter’s Tale which kicked off his company’s current West End season, this is... well, plain old-fashioned: you can’t call it “conventional” when the conventions it follows are so outdated.

Written for The Lady.