A rapturous Juliet awaits her lover on a luxurious bed conjured from a sheet of billowing snowy silk; a company of maidens in floating robes and virile young warriors undulate in a ritualised dance that makes them appear like a single breathing organism. These are the crowning moments of this free interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, presented by Korea’s Mokhwa Repertory Company and the revered playwright and director Oh Tae Suk.

Unfortunately, the rest of this 90-minute canter through the play’s key scenes is often rather crude, with a prevalence of curiously judged comedy obliterating any sense of romantic or tragic power.

This is partly due to the uncomfortable disparity between the Korean dialogue and Shakespeare’s poetry. Cho Eun A’s Nurse bustles about while a chorus of fixedly grinning youngsters complain: “Pooh, Nurse’s dumplings smell bad”. Spying Juliet for the first time, Kim Byung Cheol bluntly remarks: “I will cut the maidenhead out of that girl tonight” — hardly the language of a young man in love with love. And Kim Mun Jung’s sweet, mischievously childlike Juliet interrupts her rendition of the exquisite “Gallop apace” speech, loaded with anticipatory sensuality, to remark prosaically: “Oh, I’m bored to death.” But the problem is not simply a linguistic one, but also one of general tone. The use of martial arts, animalistic masks and the ceremonial burning of incense give the production an intriguing folkloric quality. The ghastly pre-recorded electronic music does not. The fight scenes, and Bae Jung Hae’s choreography, often have a spectacular grace, but one of the most important brawls — between Romeo, Mercutio and Tybalt — takes place, for no easily fathomable reason, in and around a bath tub; and the subsequent death of Mercutio is devoid of emotional intensity.

The virginal Juliet celebrates her first tentative kiss with Romeo by straddling him with a peculiar sexual confidence, yet later, their one full night of tender intimacy is rendered as a farce. Romeo spends an eternity attempting to pull off one of Juliet’s socks; giggling, she flees beneath the sheets. He, pursuing her, gets so entangled in the bedding that he ends up cocooned in silk, managing to free himself only in time to hear, with comical frustration, the cock crowing, signifying morning and the loss of his opportunity for intercourse.

Like much else here, the sequence is prettily staged and faintly amusing. But while these star-crossed lovers may make you smile, the passion and power of their story have somehow been lost in translation.

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