This energetic production recasts Shakespeare’s teenage lovers as a middle-aged couple, with Natalie Casey’s 40-year-old Juliet and Russell Kane’s seasoned Romeo embarking on an enthusiastic fling. The approach makes the romance lively and relatable, but weakens the original’s sense of young lovers challenging an older generation and rejecting their families’ feud.

Jimmy Fairhurst’s cacophonous staging features Balearic music, audience interaction, updated jokes and deliberately comic touches, including Botox for Lady Capulet and Romeo’s scaffolder costume. The cast brings warmth and strong command of Shakespeare’s language, though the production’s extended business and insistence on fun sometimes overwhelm the play; it runs at the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme until 10 October.