Everything, it seems, depends on Juliet: for nothing can be ill, if she be well cast. And if she not be well cast? The question is an idle one, because in Kelly Paterniti we have an excellent Juliet. She is vibrant and original. Whatever faults this new Bell Shakespeare production may have, in her they are redeemed.

Even so, I might have wished it was not Romeo and Juliet. In the last two years, Bell Shakespeare has sent us As You Like It, Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Later this year we will get Othello. This seems like pretty unambitious fare. I am tempted to repeat what the English critic Max Beerbohm said of an almost identical programme more than a hundred years ago: much as I love these plays, I do not wish to see them again.

Basta, though. Cautious programming is no doubt a reflection of the current arts funding landscape. Romeo and Juliet it must be. And, yes, Paterniti redeems even this. All in all, director Peter Evans's production is compelling.