Polly Findlay, who this year joined Natalie Abrahami and Thea Sharrock on the winners' roll call for the JMK award for directors, has certainly got the right idea about one of Shakespeare's more tedious efforts: she plays it pacy, in a cut-down version that winds it all up in just over two hours. James Cotterill's panelled wood design creates the right claustrophobic atmosphere for Findlay's thriller-like approach, even if it does make the Capulets look as though if they were the proud owners of a fitted bedroom with built-in bed. Unfortunately, Findlay fails to give any sense of time and place, and the production is rather more coldly English than hot-headedly Italian.
There's not much warmth in the central relationship, either: Jack Gordon's Romeo and Natasha Barrero's doll-like Juliet look nice, but make young love seem strangely middle-aged. It is the older actors who come off best - particularly Joanna Bacon's Nurse, who is not the normal comic caricature but a substitute mother trying to do the right thing and failing.
There are other good things: I liked Harry Hadden-Paton's conversational Mercutio, especially his Queen Mab speech, which he delivers not as the theatrical equivalent of the triple-axel, but as if every word is forming like a bubble in his head and is as surprising to him as it is to us. It creates just the right atmosphere of sinister premonition that the production lacks elsewhere.
This may not be the best JMK showcase, but I suspect that won't stop Findlay going places - she has already been snapped up by the National as a staff director.
· Until August 12. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
