THE shock of the new has struck the York Shakespeare Project, and not before time.

Director Sarah Punshon is putting the shakes into Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet. First we learn that next week's production on the Rowntree Park bandstand will be set in 1950s' small-town Italy. Now news filters through that she has cast a stand-up comedian as Romeo, a barmaid as Juliet and... a woman as Mercutio (going one stage further than the transvestite in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film version).

Mercutio, first. Sarah has chosen Cecily Boyes, a receptionist at a higher education institute, for this traditionally male role. "Cecily just had fun with the material at the auditions. She did audition for Juliet and she did it well but I said 'I think you can play Mercutio'. I was down to eight potential Juliets and I'd already decided Mercutio should be a woman, so I called them all back to read both parts, and Cecily just leapt out for the role," said Sarah, who has just finished her year as assistant director at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

"There's a lot going on between the group of friends, Mercutio, Romeo and Benvolio, and that's the difference with Juliet, who is very isolated and only ever sees her parents or the Nurse. Romeo's group hangs out and tells jokes, and everyone recognises there's a particular subtext to Romeo and Mercutio's relationship, which has been seen as possibly homosexual.

"Now by casting Cecily as Mercutio, you can have her as crude and more boyish; those kind of characteristics were not recognisable in women in Shakespeare's time, but they are now - and it would have been criminal not to use such a brilliant comic performer as Cecily."

Sarah has a further reason for the casting. "I have a general feminist point to make: I'm frustrated that there are not as many good parts for women in these plays as there are for men. Why not have women playing men's roles? Boys used to play Juliet.

"It also makes it sexy, all that sexy stuff in Mercutio's Queen Mab speech becomes ever so slightly dangerous and naughty and just so much fun."

Romeo will be played by Howard Spencer-Mosley, stand-up comic, alternative York tour guide, City Screen duty manager and Shakespeare debutant. "I was swapping ideas about Romeo And Juliet with West Yorkshire Playhouse artistic director Ian Brown, who said the big thing must be that you don't feel everything has gone when Mercutio dies," says Sarah.

"Too often Romeo is just a drip who mopes around, but Howard came along and had this fantastic connection with the audience about him. Ian Brown said, 'If you find someone you think can play Mercutio, cast him as Romeo', and that was Howard."

Juliet was harder to cast, and Katie Martin, from Middlesbrough, was a lucky find. "She's studying English at York St John College, and she only came to the auditions because she works behind the bar at the Minster Inn, an old man's pub that our producer Alan Lyons uses, and he kept mentioning the production to her!" Sarah says.

"She's obviously pretty because Juliet has to be pretty; she's just very sexy, with a lovely north east accent, and there's definitely sexual chemistry between her and Howard."

Romeo And Juliet, York Shakespeare Project, Rowntree Park, York, July 13 to 24. Performances: 7.30pm nightly, except 6pm on July 17 and 24; 2.30pm, Saturday matinees; no show on July 18. Tickets: £7. Box office: 01904 621756.

Charles Hutchinson

Updated: 09:09 Friday, July 08, 2005