CONDENSED Shakespeare fills the York Theatre Royal Studio from today until Saturday when short versions of The Tempest, Macbeth and Julius Ceasar will be staged, two plays per night.

These double bills of Shakespeare’s tales of supernatural events, villainous deeds and power struggles will be played by three groups of 14 to 16 year olds from the York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre.

Paula Clark, the theatre’s creative skills promoter, is directing a one–hour version of Macbeth, always her first choice for the project. “It’s my favourite Shakespeare play and I just knew my group would be excited by it,” she says.

“I heard a few people groan when I said we were going to do Shakespeare, and one girl said she was terrified of the language and worried about it being boring, but now she’s playing a witch and she’s loving it.”

Mind you, others approached the project with different expectations. “There were those who were thinking, ‘Oh, fantastic, we’re going to do something traditional’ and now they’re thinking, ‘Oh, what have you done? This isn’t Macbeth’!”

Nevertheless, it most certainly still is Macbeth. “It’s good to do it this way because it makes you have to be more creative and it’s definitely a very bold adaptation,” says Paula. “I went in with a long adaptation and the cast suggested their own cuts from that.

“ We then did a second draft and worked together on the cuts, which is difficult because every line is famous or intrinsic to the next murder, and as it’s thriller you don’t want any of those thrills to be cut out, but I hope the cast now feel they have complete ownership of this Macbeth.”

As part of this version, Ross Allen has written three vignettes for the Porter, traditionally a brief comic interlude from Macbeth’s reign of terror, but here turned into two Porters, played by Ross, 15, and Hania Ellingham, 14. “What these vignettes do is ‘stop’ the play and take us into another world, where Ross has created these wonderful, dry characters,” says Paula.

Paula’s cast of 25 will include an ensemble playing soldiers, witches and even the trees on the move from Birnam Wood. “It’ll be interesting to see this play in the Studio because it will be intense and thrilling and yet so intimate and suffocating as there’ll be so many people on stage,” she says.

Kate Plumb, the Theatre Royal’s youth theatre director, offered several choices to her group, whose members picked Julius Caesar, while youth theatre freelance practitioner Paul Birch selected The Tempest for his cast on account of its physicality.

So physical, in fact, that seven cast members are playing the island controlled by Prospero. Among them will be Evie Kyte, 15, from All Saints RC School, in her first York Theatre Royal show. “It’s physical theatre, where we all have different shapes that we create and we also makes soundscapes and noises,” she says. “We all work together to torture and intimidate Caliban and we work on Prospero’s mind too.”

Evie has been enjoying the rehearsals in the De Grey Rooms. ”It’s been a really good experience working with people from different schools,” she says. Come tonight, all that work will come to fruition at 7pm.

York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre presents The Tempest at 7pm and Macbeth at 8.30pm tonight; Julius Caesar, 7pm, and The Tempest, 8.30pm, tomorrow; Macbeth, 7pm, and Julius Caesar, 8.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk