"If you didn't know otherwise, you could easily believe the cast were professionals," said ourreviewer when Brighton Dome Youth Theatre staged their first production, The Man Of Mode, back in 2004.

And a similar standard is expected of the group's third venture, Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, a regrettably obvious choice but no less challenging for that.

"I know actors who've done this for the RSC and The National," says director Penny Cobbold, "and they've often told me the play has failed because it's just too big. Our work is very much cut out for us but I believe we're going to get there."

Herself a performer whose extensive work in the West End has included Robert Stigwood's Grease, Trevor Nunn's Starlight Express and Fame, Cobbold is one of a team of professional actors who make up InService, the Brighton-based producing house responsible for last year's production of The White Devil, as well as running the Brighton Dome Youth Theatre. David Oyelwo, who directed Man Of Mode, is another.

"You learn so much as an actor from teaching young kids," the Spooks actor said of the experience.

"Because they are not yet shackled by training there is something very raw, very real, very private and instinctive."

Cobbold, who makes her directorial debut with this modern-dress production, has been similarly inspired.

"Fred Lancaster, who plays Romeo, has really set a standard for the company in terms of throwing himself in and grappling with the intense emotions," she says.

"He's 19 and literally just got back from a gap year travelling the morning rehearsals started.

"Sarah Wyld, who's 17, is Juliet. She has the most difficult journey in the whole play because she goes from being a child to a woman prepared to commit suicide."

InService's desire to reach out to young audiences - inevitably facilitated by your chosen play being a syllabus staple - was one reason for Cobbold choosing Romeo And Juliet.

Another was her belief that "the purity of the love between Romeo and Juliet in this world of hatred and darkness is so relevant to today".

"There're very few teenagers who are in that place where they're just looking for pure love," she says.

"They're so crowded by the media and lust and sex. Here are two people who want to do it properly and get married."

Of course you could argue that the young lovers were simply so desperate to get physical they married in secret at the first available opportunity.

But then that's the thing about Shakespeare - as Cobbold says, "there are so many ways to interpret a line".