ON Tuesday, the NT Shell Connections festival of youth theatre at York Theatre Royal opened with Discontented Winter/House Remix, a neo-Shakespearean play that playwright Bryony Lavery had made "deliberately difficult to stage".

Away from the festival, Stagecoach Youth Theatre York is presenting one of Shakespeare's most difficult works, not deliberately difficult mind you, just plain difficult.

It is the work of a playwright in his late, prog-rock phase, in turns grumpy, gentle, poetic and self-indulgent, his head full of floating spirits, jesters, goddesses, nymphs, kings and exiled dukes. Director John Cooper's programme helpfully contains an introduction to The Tempest, only for it to spread across six pages: a little light reading before the lights dim and the Tempest storm begins! There is a moment in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol 1 where a line by Daryl Hannah is lost in the crunch of Michael Madsen mixing a drink in a blender. She promptly has to repeat it. Cinema verit, Tarantino style! Now Cooper goes for authenticity in the storm, a scene set high above the stage floor to the accompaniment of a roaring wind and raging sea that as good as obliterates the shouts of the ship's crew.

In front of them, adding visual clout to the dissonance are video screens with blurred images of an angry sea toying with a struggling ship. This is the first in a series of video creations by York College National Award Video Group, used most effectively to convey Ariel and the Goddesses in flight.

Technology has its place in Stagecoach's production, but rightly more emphasis is placed on the performances and the language. Cooper has nurtured the heavyweight talents of Jack Smith and Lee Richardson to the point where their natural stage presence is put to maximum effect in a Shakespearean setting. Of course Smith is young for the role of Prospero - Gielgud played it in his dotage in Prospero's Books - but you could not ask for a more considered performance, due care and attention being given to each line and scene. Likewise, Richardson responds to both the poetic yearning of Shakespeare's text and to Cooper's interpretation of the feral, savage slave Caliban as someone who craves to be loved.

Kit Hildyard's drunken Stephano, Jonny Holbek's earnest Ferdinand, Aimi Dawson's nimble jester Trinculo and Stacey Johnstone's Miranda catch the eye (although Miranda's hair should be swept back off her face to let us see her eyes). Best of all is Olivia Sexton's sparkling, bright spirit, Ariel. Olivia is 11 - typically audacious casting by Cooper - and you should take note of the name because her sense of drama is already remarkable.

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Updated: 10:44 Thursday, April 29, 2004