Romeo and Juliet famously opens with the invocation to observe the "two hour traffic" of the stage. Bizarrely, the traffic of Stephen Edwards's production includes a vast articulated fuel transporter trundles on and sits there for the duration.
Parking a truck in the middle of a production presents a problem. The cast are obliged to crawl in and around this huge lump of metal, exploring its potential as a metaphor. What the metaphor might be remains oblique until you consult the programme, in which designer Duncan Hayler offers the following explanation:
"It carries water into an arid landscape; it also suggests a knight in shining armour; an insect adapted to the heat which might spread its wings and learn to fly; a noble chariot or an armoured fighting machine of a past gone age or simply a wrecked truck."
The concept of the show posits a future battle for dwindling reserves of water. I don't know where Edwards and Hayler picked up this idea from, but it isn't the text. A further programme note speculates on the significance of Shakespeare choosing the name Mercutio in reference to the planet closest to the sun. Given that the first thorough observations of Mercury were not made until a generation after Shakespeare's death, I think this is unlikely.
The actors work stolidly and stoically within an utterly baffling wardrobe brief (Merchant Ivory flannels for the Capulets, medieval armour for the Montagues) yet suffer most of the spoken poetry to be smothered by a fatuous underscore. It's practically impossible for Ben Joiner's Romeo and Olivia's Lumley's Juliet to strike a romantic spark: which is probably just as well given that there's a gigantic tanker right behind them.
· Until July 2. Box office: 01332 363275.
