In one sense, it doesn't matter what you do with Shakespeare, his stories are so powerful and universal and the language so beautiful, he can survive anything you care to throw at him.

But in another sense it matters very much and I found this polyglot production of Romeo And Juliet patronising, confusing and puzzling.

Director Stephen Unwin aims his version directly at a young audience - school and college students who may well be studying the play.

Shakespeare's 15th-Century poetry is all there, apart from the prologue, but the sexual gestures were from today's streets.

That's not a crime, audiences in the author's time were more than a little bawdy and would have easily understood the Bard's sexual references but this production is set in mid-Fifties Verona, with A-line skirts and cha-cha music, making it all seem a little perverse.

Also quite distracting is OT Fagbenle's surely exaggerated, Caribbean-accented Mercutio. He was certainly likeable and got a lot of laughs but I did find him irritating.

Although he handled the part extremely well, Adam Croasdell's Romeo was just a little too frenetic, Tunde Oba's Paris is beautifully dignified, as are the bosses of the Montague and Capulet families, both the latter giving us no small measure of Godfather-style menace.

But the undoubted star of the show is Juliet, played by Davies Grey, replacing the billed Laura Rees who suffered an injury when she fell off the balcony two months ago.

Grey easily convinces us she is a feisty 13-year-old lady.

She roars her emotions, yells out her passion and ends her role with great determination as she plunges the dagger into her chest.

This is indeed a Juliet who knows her heart and mind and will brook no compromise.

The play changes gear at the interval. At the beginning, it is done strictly for laughs, so much so that even the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt do not strike horror.

But after the break, this Romeo And Juliet is a much darker, more intimate and scary production. What is irritating in the first act becomes a delight in act two, all played out against a simple dark blue backcloth with minimal furniture.

The last scenes hit the heart as Shakespeare and his powerful story is fully redeemed.

Overall, this production is delightfully simple but flawed because of its attempt to play to the gallery.

It is taken at a sharp pace which makes three hours pass quickly and the diction of all, including that Caribbean accent, is impeccable.

I did come to like the show a great deal, just give me the flowing robes of the period when it was written and I would have been even happier.