RATHER than High Renaissance men in tights, English Touring Theatre's Romeo And Juliet starts with men in fights.

Out goes the prologue "where we lay our scene" and Sampson and Gregory's punning banter. Instead, the first words in artistic director Stephen Unwin and Michael Cronin's newly streamlined adaptation are Sampson's "I strike quickly, being moved".

English Touring Theatre's tenth anniversary production does indeed strike quickly, "radically simplifying both punctuation and stage direction". There is not one seat on Sara Perks's stage: Laura Rees's Juliet sits, long of limb and languor, in a picture-frame window for the balcony scene, with no bed for Romeo and Juliet's nuptials; just a rope for his escape.

All is urgency; Romeo and Juliet are love struck even before removing their masks; and those seeking a rest must sit on a step at the front of the raked wooden floor, a move that becomes too repetitious.

The only beds involve death: Juliet in her bedroom for her faked death scene; Romeo and Juliet in the Capulet crypt at the finale. As with Hamlet, peace comes only in the release of dying.

Unwin sets his Romeo And Juliet in post-Second World War Verona, modern enough to engage with today but still a city of ancient social division where the warring Capulets and Montagues spit at each other.

Inspiration here is the Italian realist cinema: cigarettes, Milanese couture, and Mercutio sipping espresso, in a fusion of style and bile, high fashion and higher passion, suits and street spats.

This Romeo And Juliet seeks to be hot and cool, what with the sexiest of rumba dances in masks at the Capulet ball, the prickly heat of Robert Styles's fiery Tybalt and the Caribbean strut of OT Fagbenle's Afro-haired Mercutio, who is as wild and funky as Jimi Hendrix.

Yet the production blows hot and cold: the opening fight scene is more ham than beef; Rees's Juliet affects an overly gawky manner, all swinging teenage arms in the manner of Harry Enfield's Kevin; there is little of the teenager about Adam Croasdell's Romeo but for the comic moment where he cries when the Nurse (Marjorie Yates) enfolds him in her arms. The sharp suits are in danger of becoming a catwalk sideshow, particularly in the case of Tunde Oba's Paris.

English Touring Theatre's first co-production with York Theatre Royal is a welcome new partnership but this flashy show is nowhere near as satisfying as ETT's King Lear or John Gabriel Borkman.

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Updated: 12:53 Wednesday, September 10, 2003