SET on a black box stage, with characters dressed in a gaudy array of timeless costumes, Studio Theatre offered a supposed new slant on the world’s greatest love story, but succeeded only in presenting an over-long, disjointed production, missing so much of the crucial tension, poetry and deep emotion the story demands.

As Romeo, Steve Graney lacked the title character’s immature impetuosity, relying throughout on shouting and gesticulating to convey emotion, while the object of his affection, Hebe Fletcher, needed to convey more strongly Juliet’s passage from excited child to clearthinking participant in the ultimately doomed relationship.

Along the way, there was much unnecessary shuffling of scenery by a specially-commissioned and somewhat superfluous Chorus figure, and while not enough was made of the comic opportunities the play offers, Tamsin Jacson’s beribboned Nurse and Stew Taylor’s do-good Friar fared best in their interpretation and delivery of the verse.