A summer-long exploration of the joy, disappointment, and even tragedy of young love has begun at the Globe Theatre, with a new staging of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, familiar to many in Oxford through his six-year association with the Oxford Stage Company, says the season will focus on capturing the “wild energy” of young lovers. Accordingly, the summer programme also contains three other plays examining a love theme including a touring version of The Comedy of Errors being staged at the Bodleian Library in July and August.

Romeo and Juliet is entertaining, and the male cast, in particular, give energetic performances of physical comedy. Philip Cumbus offers a splendid Mercutio, profane and edgy, half exasperated with Romeo’s innocence, half in love with it. He, along with Fergal McElherron as Balthazar, keeps the pace up in the first few acts maximising every ribald and bawdy phrase and reminding us that the play, for much of its duration, could easily be mistaken for a comedy. The fight scenes are excellently choreographed and Ukweli Roach as Tybalt offers genuine intimidation, playing the Capulet hot-head with an air of thuggish menace.

Of the female cast, Penny Layden delivers the stand-out performance playing Juliet’s Nurse in voice like Gracie Fields, laden with innuendo. But there are problems. Ellie Kendrick’s Juliet, and Adetomiwa Edun’s Romeo (pictured) don’t create immediate chemistry. Kendrick’s Juliet seems designed to highlight her timidity, how much like a child she is, how much under the control of men. The decision to take the sleeping draught and eventually to end her own life seems more like a juvenile tantrum than an act of grand passion. A lack of convincing physical intimacy, even as the lovers stand together reflecting on their wedding night, doesn’t help matters. The effect is too much like two people with a mutually embarrassing teenage crush than a lusty teenage affair full of the “wild energy” that Dromgoole seeks.

This is a production that may grow as the season goes on, especially if the leads find a way of developing their onstage passion, and reaching greater emotional depths.

For now it remains a good but not excellent production, at its best in the more obscure corners of the play, happiest in bawdy, portraying minor characters and knockabout comedy.

n Performances continue until August 23. Call: 0207 4019919 (www.shakespeares-globe.org).