THREE Shakespeare plays are being given the short, sharp treatment in three nights of double bills this week, each production presented by a group of 14 to16-year-old York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre members.

This adds up to condensed Shakespeare in the compact Studio space: a contrasting audience experience to the epic scale of the Royal Shakespeare Company or Shakespeare's Globe.

Thursday's brace of hour-long adaptations combined he Tempest and Macbeth; Friday offered Julius Caesar and The Tempest; tonight's pair will be Macbeth and Julius Caesar, a night of villainous deeds and power struggles in both plays and supernatural events in the Scottish play to match those of The Tempest.

Presenting a big cast on a small stage is always the Studio challenge for the Theatre Royal youth theatre groups and both directors for Thursday 's shows made a positive feature of more being more.

One third of Paul Birch's cast of 24 for The Tempest played storm-tossed mariners at the start and then became a physical embodiment of Prospero's island, whether being a home from which Joshua Swales-Heartfield's huge slave Caliban emerged, or bearing bodies, or making bird noises or the clatter of cymbals (struck by Evie Kyte). This was physical theatre, youth theatre style.

Likewise, Ariel, the spirit, was myriad Ariels, five to be precise, all dressed by wardrobe designer in Lenka Kupkova in floaty white inscribed with such words as Violence and Rage, their faces half hidden by pale white masks that added to their evanescent mystery.

Harsh cuts had to be made, axing Ariel's big speech and reducing Prospero's Dreams monologue to a couplet, but this was ensemble theatre first and foremost, emphasised by the cast uniting to form a ship and its occupants at the finale, although it still allowed Jake Telfer to affirm his leading-man potential as Prospero.

Paula Clark's love of Macbeth - it is her favourite play - poured out of a visceral abridged production that played it as a dark and black-humoured thriller. She wanted it to be bold and unapologetic and it was exactly that, re-instating the often-cut queen witch Hecate (Katie McEntee) and putting the giggling witches (Katy Staite, Maddie Drury and Grace Hobson) to the fore, hunched over a sandpit rather than a cauldron.

The Porter was turned into two Hooray Henry/Henrietta Porters (Ross Allen and Hania Ellingham), who were as much reporters as porters, thanks to the Julian Clary-voiced Allen writing two additional scenes of social comment/comic relief .

Ferdinand Holley's military-attired Macbeth had to overcome looking more like a 1968 extra fromThe Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus but had an increasingly reckless swagger to go with the dagger. The performance of the night, meanwhile, came from Charlotte Wood, displaying accomplished stage skills beyond her tender years as Lady Macbeth, before Clark left us with a haunting Hitchcockian image: a witch running her bloody hands down a regal white banner. Short, sharp. shocking Shakespeare.

York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre, Shakespeare Shorts, York Theatre Royal Studio; tonight, Macbeth at 7pm and Julius Caesar, 8.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk