The stage is covered with bunches of flowers. It’s like a fatal accident site, but the teenage girls all around me in the audience are rocking with laughter.

The laughter gets even louder when a tall and sturdy flower is picked up, only to wilt immediately. The symbolism is as subtle as the lines “Draw thy tool”, and “My naked weapon is out”, which also bring the house down.

We’re at the start of Pilot Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet. “This is the ultimate story that really encapsulates the feeling of being a teenager,” writes the company’s artistic director Marcus Romer in a programme note. Certainly you are left in no doubt that Romeo and his mates are out on the pull: when Romeo first catches sight of Juliet, it’s clearly her body he’s after, not her mind.

“I think so,” laughed Rachel Spicer, playing Juliet, when we met up after the performance. “They meet once, and Romeo comes to Juliet’s garden, and she says, ‘right, we’re going to get married’. And he’s, like, ‘phwoarr’. It’s an infatuation, that kind of stupid love that’s only possible for teenagers.”

Juliet is 13 when she meets Romeo, and in no mood to marry Paris, the count who is hoping to take her to the altar — in this determinedly 21st-century production, poor old Paris is presented as a nerdy gentleman, who can barely get a word in edgeways.

“He doesn’t get a chance, does he?” Rachel Spicer interjects cheerfully.

How much did Rachel resemble this stroppy Juliet when she was the same age?

“I think I was a relatively easy child to rear. To be honest, in the privacy of our own homes, with our parents, people we love and who have to love us because we share DNA, it can be quite unpleasant and unattractive. You want what you want — NOW. If you don’t get it, something is seriously wrong! I’m 40 per cent like that — I’m definitely headstrong, and I want what I want when I want it.”

Pilot’s Romeo and Juliet turns much darker in the second half, and inevitably more emotionally draining on the actress playing Juliet.

I was talking to Rachel on a matinee day, with one performance just completed, and another still to go. A daunting prospect?

“Your body just gets into the rhythm of it. You have to let it go after a performance, or you’d exhaust yourself. But yes, I am knackered afterwards — but in a good way.”

Rachel and Oliver Wilson, playing Romeo, auditioned for their parts together. What, I asked, was her reaction when she first clapped eyes on him?

“Oh good, he’s handsome, half the work is done. We went into the next morning scene in Friar Lawrence’s cell, and on reaching the line ‘it was the nightingale, and not the lark’. I seem to remember sticking my tongue in his ear. He took off his belt, and I took off my shirt, and we were kind of off to the races. They wouldn’t have had a play if there was no spark!” Oliver Wilson, in an email reply, confirmed that the relationship works well.

“We had a very good chemistry from day one. Our audition together did indeed get a bit heated! I loved our first reading together because we just played, had fun, and didn’t try to be Romeo and Juliet stereotypes. It never gets boring falling in love with her every night.”

Oliver has done Shakespeare before, but Rachel landed Juliet straight out of drama school.

“I’m very lucky to be experiencing the role at this stage in my career,” she said. “I’ve often thought that Juliet would be very difficult to play because she’s 13, and goes from A to Z in the course of two hours.

“It’s often said that younger actresses don’t have the life experience to pull it off. But once I started delving into it, and rolling around in her, I realised that she’s just a girl, as am I.

“It became more humbling and human than this great big, scary Shakespearean role.”

Pilot Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet is at the Oxford Playhouse from November 9 to 13. Tickets on 01865 305305 or at oxfordplayhouse.com