THE “two hours’ traffick of our stage” normally rattles by in its inexorable joyride to teenage death for Romeo And Juliet, all the more tragic for that speed.

Last Wednesday, however, a power cut cast snow-struck York into darkness, causing an unexpected traffick jam only minutes into all that “biting your thumb at us, sir” scrapping kicking off.

Would this be a story of more woe for Juliet and her Romeo? Thankfully, power was eventually restored, and the show went on in theatre tradition.

Romeo And Juliet is the ideal Shakespeare play for a school production – cast of 107 and all - not only because of its tale of teenage love and its multitude of young roles, but also because its timeless themes suit setting in a modern context, be it Bernstein and Sondheim’s 1957 musical West Side Story or Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet.

Both had an influence on Head of Drama Alys Clark and Sally Glenn’s thrilling, socially sharp production, with its plentiful use of dance scenes and pop songs, performed to musical director Richard Mann’s orchestral accompaniment by a retinue of talented young singers at the back of All Saints’ Lower Site Hall.

The hall floor had been taken over by the cast, the audience divided, as if matching the warring Capulets and Montagues, either side of the traverse setting.

In the co-directors’ twist on the tale, Romeo (Theo Mason-Wood) and Juliet (Emma Dubruel) played out their love story against the backdrop of bar wars, the new-money Capulets owning the glitzy celebrity haunt, the Star-Crossed Lovers; the Montagues running the long-established Sycamore Grove, divided by their families’ enmity and the length of the street.

When the first fight broke out, the girls were to the fore, in practical terms because there are always more girls than boys up for drama at schools, but it chimed with weekend nights on the Micklegate run too.

The fair city had switched from Verona to London and later Mantua to Manchester, while the usually dull Paris (Jamie Gillick) had become a pop star, pursued by the paparazzi. Gillick later had his pop-star solo moment performing his own song in ballad mode at the piano, one of the innovations that made this show pack a musical punch.

In the main, the updates worked well, but there will always be incongruities, in this case an absence of London accents, and while Juliet entered dreamily listening to music on headphones, the banished Romeo still had to be contacted by letter when a text would now have saved him and Juliet from their fate, but where would the romance have been in that?!

And this was a truly romantic production, so aptly timed for the week of Valentine’s Day, never more so than when Phoebe Marshall and Chad Hammerton sang Falling Slowly from the Irish film Once for Romeo and Juliet’s wedding scene. Great choice: a song so beautiful yet with the hint of impending darkness at the edges.

You utterly fell for the heartbreaking two die-young-stay-pretty leads here, Mason-Wood’s very youthful, innocent, spur-of-the-moment Romeo, and Dubruel’s fast-maturing yet wide-eyed Juliet, each blessed with delightfully poetic diction too.

Also catching the eye were Tori Klays’ highly energetic Benvolia, making the very most of a support role; Nok Walkling’s rather trendy Abbess; and Joe Sample’s hot-headed Mercutio, played as if he were Thomas Turgoose in a gritty Shane Meadows film.

This critic has seen Romeo And Juliet more than any other play, happily so, and once more it worked its tragic magic. Yet it yet was so uplifting too, full of fresh ideas, such as the stylised physical theatre in Tarantino style for the fights; the wonderful original music by director of performing arts Richard Mann, Gillick and Ruth Lewis; and the diverse dancing, both ballet and street in Jeanette Couldry's choreography, even if some dance sequences could have been shortened.