The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of the earliest of Shakespeare’s works and by common consent one of his least successful. Most productions are jazzed-up affairs designed to distract audiences from the absurdities of the story. At Northampton, director Matthew Dunster has joined forces with physical theatre company RashDash in a good-looking version (designer Paul Wills) that plunges us into the pop and fashion world.

The gentleman (though one certainly isn’t) are Proteus and Valentine who perform together in a Veronese rock band. As portrayed by Alexander Cobb and Joe Doyle (pictured), the pair really do play, an excellent musical score being a pleasing feature of the show. Valentine leaves for the big city lights of Milan where he becomes part of the circle of the duke (Matthew Flynn), a fashion designer bearing more than passing similarity to Karl Lagerfeld.

This camp figure takes a dim view of Valentine’s involvement with his model daughter Silvia (Helen Goalen), having lined her up with Thurio (Malachi Kirby) who appears to double as his own gay squeeze. Trouble worsens when Proteus leaves for Milan, too, and forgetting his shopkeeper girlfriend Julia (Abbi Greenland) becomes Valentine’s second love rival.

For dog lovers such as myself a welcome feature of this play is usually the appearance of a winning four-footer in the role of Crab, miscreant pet to Proteus’s comic servant Launce. Here we get to see only a plastic hound carried around in Launce’s handbag. A handbag? Yes, because in this production the ‘he’ becomes a ‘she’ in the form of Clemmie Sveaas. And very funny she is.

Until October 22. Box office: 01604 624811 (www.royalandderngate.co.uk)