Hip-hop, Shakespeare. breakdance and mime. Mix them all together and the result? A success.

Rennie Harris incorporated different genres into Rome And Jewels just as Vivian Westwood incorporates colour into her clothes.

An all-male cast depicted this classic story of violence, humour, death and love through Shakespearean prose, ghetto slang and 21st-Century culture.

Rome And Jewels, though, was not Romeo And Juliet. Instead, Harris used the greatest love story ever told as a canvas on which to create something new.

Gang warfare featured strongly, as did the love interest which was curiously told to the audience without any need for a female cast member.

This play was true dance theatre. A better description, perhaps, is impressionist performance art: An overall picture was created without any single situation being made clear.

Different dancers told the story as emotions and situations morphed into each other, leaving you feeling as though you got it but, occasionally, wondering how you got there.

But then the play wasn't just about the story, it was about the performance.

At times, particularly after the interval, the audience seemed to forget they were in the Theatre Royal - which still has Marlene Dietrich's picture hanging proudly on a wall - as they clapped, cheered and screamed in appreciation of the DJs.

And I'm sure there was nothing in Romeo And Juliet about breakdancers strutting their stuff to an enthusiastic crowd which, by then, was clapping in time to the beat.

If all this sounds odd, it is because it was. It certainly was not normal theatre, which is why, frankly, it worked.

Shakespeare, you feel, would have approved of taking the story to the streets and bringing the streets into the story.

review by Sam Relph, sam.relph@theargus.co.uk