Romeo and Juliet, Festival Theatre, Chichester

Culture clash and confusion

Though Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet dramatises the consequences of an "ancient grudge", the divisions it depicts are not religious in origin. Both clans are Christian. But such is the universal appeal of the play that producers have been understandably tempted to use the tragedy as a vehicle for exploring enmities deeper and less resolvable than family feuding. The most striking staging along these lines was the famous mid-Nineties co-production in Jerusalem, where the Capulets were played by Palestinians and the Montagues by Israelis. There was no need to give the tragedy a Middle East makeover. In terms of the play's applicability to matters painfully close to home, the symbolism of the casting said it all.

Indhu Rubasingham's new production on the main stage of Chichester illustrates, by contrast, the problems that arise when you stick to Shakespeare's text and shift the drama to a setting where the conflicts are religious. Romeo and Juliet is here transplanted to 16th-century Istanbul, with the turbaned Romeo (Lex Shrapnel) and his family belonging to the majority Muslim population and with Juliet (Emily Blunt) and the Capulet clan members of the Christian community.

The aim, evidently, is to raise the stakes and the tension. But while the relocation results in some lovely fabrics and powerful images of ugly discord (for example, as hostilities mount, a Muslim banner is defaced with a bloody cross), the cultural alterations are worked out too superficially to distract from the inevitable oddities that arise. Short of presenting him as a man in the grip of a bizarre delusion that he's a Franciscan monk, it's hard to fathom Friar Lawrence (an unsurprisingly subdued Richard O'Callaghan) or his relationships. One moment he's exchanging Islamic-sounding greetings with Romeo, the next he's giving vent to Christian expostulations such as "Jesu Maria!" and "Holy Saint Francis!"

It would be easier to overlook such anomalies if the religious strains intensified the combustible atmosphere of the play. But the street-fighting lacks the flash of unnerving danger and the temperature of these outdoor scenes remains too tepid to evoke the city heat that sets "the mad blood stirring".

Still, there are some persuasive performances. Shrapnel and Blunt make a very attractive pairing and convey the touching humour as well as the poignant ardour of the couple's brief encounters, despite the treacly music that underscores and threatens to undermine their moments of charged intimacy. They receive good support from Una Stubbs, whose hyperactive Nurse radiates the bright shallowness that leaves her treacherously incapable of understanding the depth and resolve of Juliet's love, and from Jack Tarlton, who brings an worrying edge of sexual disturbance and unresolved obsession with Romeo to Mercutio's compulsive bawdiness.

The most electric sequence occurs right at the end. Chastened by the corpses of the lovers, the two sides come together with an uncomfortably sentimental glibness. A Muslim lady walks across to giveLady Capulet a comforting hug. The two grief-stricken fathers support each like old friends as they make their exit. Then this queasy spectacle of rushed optimism is viciously undercut. Left on stage alone, a little turbaned boy goes to embrace a Christian girl, and at the last moment she spits straight in face. So much for the brave new future. This honourable but underpowered production could do with a few more inspired jolts of that kind.

In rep to 5 October (01234 781312)