Arts: Review: Likewise variable

Romeo and Juliet

RSC, The Pit

For once, Shakespeare's lovers are not so much star-cross'd as sun-kiss'd. The RSC's new production of may open with a rent-a-cliche funeral scene - all gloomy clarinets and vast black umbrellas - but from there on in, the designer Robert Jones creates a wonderfully warm atmosphere, an even greater achievement in the Barbican's Pit, a space usually more claustrophobic than intimate.

For the formal moments, Jones uses dusky linens and soft-coloured, four- button suits, but for the most part these people are in work clothes showing them as earthy Italians. Rather than suggesting rivalry based on wealth and position, he and the director Michael Attenborough place the characters closer to peasant stock than traditional nobility.

The cast take to the idea with relish. Swaggering around what appears to be the town square, they all look like they're auditioning for a remake of Bertolucci's 1900. Attenborough is at pains to point out the youthful physicality at the play's heart and uses the heat of the Verona sun to bring out sweat and sexuality. That in turn emphasises the macho violence which shimmers like a heat haze above the characters.

If the whole production were as good as the design, they'd be on to a winner but, on several counts, it fails to deliver on its promise. It has a welcome clarity but there are times when it becomes over-explanatory. It is all well and good to underline the endless sexual references by an almost infectious bout of crotch-grabbing but it makes the characters look dim when they have to resort to miming at one another quite so obviously to convey meaning. More worryingly, the urge to illustrate is at the expense of forward momentum. It's as if the actors can convey what the lines mean, but not why they are saying them in the first place, which renders too much of the evening frankly inert.

Take the scene where the lovers bid their fond farewell. Lying in bed, Ray Fearon's muscular Romeo sees that "the envious streaks do lace the severing clouds in yonder east", thereby giving us a fair idea of the view, but not much more. By contrast, in the speech that immediately follows, Zoe Waites's Juliet fills the similarly descriptive language with a moving sense of love clouded by impending loss.

Casting is always a problem. If they're too young, they won't be able to handle the verse; too old and the passion of young love in extremis looks absurd. Fearon and Waites make a handsome and genuinely convincing couple, succumbing to the heat of their passion, but Fearon is self-conscious and lacks vulnerability which leaves our sympathies relatively untouched. Waites is much more able to involve us in the drama by grabbing our sympathies. She looks like a young Harriet Walter and in only her second Shakespearean role, her low voice and quiet self-confidence lend her an impressively relaxed quality which suggest a very bright future.

When Friar Laurence (Richard Corderey, excellent) embraces Romeo and wisely tells him to abandon self-pity there's a tense silence, ended by Romeo relaxing and wrapping his arms around the Friar. It's troubling that the most moving moment is between these two men.

The Pit, The Barbican (booking: 0171-638 8891)