Romeo And Juliet is a more complex play than we think. Not only does it change gear midway from romantic comedy to tragedy, but it contains a fair dose of the highly patterned “euphuistic” language popular in verse of the time and indulged by Shakespeare in several early plays. In general, to modern sensibilities, the more heavily this technique is applied, the less amusing, interesting and comprehensible we find it. Here, much of the early business of Romeo the lover is so patterned, and it can take a bit of work to pull it off. RSC deputy artistic director Erica Whyman’s casting of a predominantly young company (augmented by a chorus of schoolchildren from whatever area the production plays in) means that they don’t always have the chops necessary. Charlotte Josephine makes for an animated, playful Mercutio, but sometimes fails to convey the sense or, indeed, the phonetic clarity.

Whyman has cast several parts cross-gender, of which Mercutio is the most prominent. She explains it in terms of conveying diversity and also “queering” gender readings; however, this instance paradoxically removes the homoerotic undercurrents from Romeo and Mercutio’s friendship. Whyman also sets out to connect the play to other contemporary issues such as knife crime. In the opening scenes of this modern-dress revival, everyone seems to be carrying a knife; even Lady Montague has a sheath strapped to her arm. Michael Hodgson’s Capulet feels like the head of the family in a particularly criminal sense. Everyone treads gently around him for fear of setting off the temper which is finally unleashed when Juliet refuses the marriage he has arranged for her. Even Mariam Haque’s Lady Capulet seems distinctly uneasy.

Above all, this is Juliet’s play far more than Romeo’s. Whyman points up the domestic as well as the romantic forces acing upon her, and Karen Fishwick takes an interpretation which gains in freshness most of what it loses in force. Juliet usually undergoes a remarkable journey from 13-year-old daughter to devastated widow within the space of a few days; Fishwick’s Juliet, I feel, remains a girl, broken rather than tempered by her ordeals. She commands more attention than Bally Gill’s Romeo throughout this intriguing but not entirely successful production.

Written for the Financial Times.