Romeo and Juliet @ The Lyceum

That Shakespeare reveals the tragic ending in the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet highlights the difficulty of staging this tragic paean to a doomed first love – how to keep its much parodied yet timeless sentiment fresh and relevant to a post Hollywood audience.

Thankfully, this sprightly new production from the Lyceum’s Autumn of Love season rises ably to the challenge with a bouncing energetic performance that captivates from the off. The Capulets and Montagues deadly feud is transposed to what appears to be a mid 20s' Verona. Neil Murray’s set, a deep and tall marble lined homage to past glories with subsiding beams and builders scaffolds, catches the aura of a collapsing system.

Director Tony Cownie fills the stage with a nimble vigour that sweeps us through the opening scenes sensibly highlighting the rich seam of humour embedded in the piece (Juliet makes her entrance by bursting on stage on a child’s scooter). The cast have fun setting up the plot, playfully sparring with Shakespeare’s textured verse and reveling in some ripe banter and hilarious backchat that can’t help but get the audience rooting for the protagonists.

Will Featherstone’s Romeo is flighty and gallus, with just enough of an earnest spine to convince us something truly life changing happens when he locks eyes with his muse, while Kirsty Mackay as Juliet captures the exuberance and sugar rush of first love but struggles a bit when she’s required to descend into the deep grief and agony of her denied future.

The second half’s darker turn calls for meatier performances and proves a bit slippery in terms of shape and tone but some of the blame for that has to be laid at the writer’s door. With its shifts in theme and genre, this isn’t Big Bill’s most focused work. The ensemble makes a brave fist of holding his sparkling poetry intact while the author slowly leads us into the convoluted plot alleyway of poisons and letters and crypts and arranged marriage.

With stand-out performances from Alexandra Mathie as the nurse and Grant O’Rourke as Mercutio, cast and director have made a fabulous job of breathing new life into this colourful, touching and desperately sad tale of youthful passion and tribal intolerance, creating in the process a rare beast indeed – a great night out with William Shakespeare.