gardens start resounding to the sound of Shakespeare. But the locally based Troika Theatre Company has decided to remain indoors, and present Romeo and Juliet in the Kenton Theatre, Henley.

“The theatre is so beautiful,” Troika founder Rachel Johnson said. “It’s amazing so few people have heard of it. It’s like a West End theatre, but in the middle of Henley. It feels traditional, but you can put a contemporary production on there as well because it’s an intimate space. With all its red drapes, it lends itself to the theatricality of Romeo and Juliet.”

Rachel — who earned praise from The Oxford Times for her production of Gaslight — is directing Romeo and Juliet herself: her version has already been seen by more than 1,000 students in north-east Italy. She confessed: “I’m a tough taskmaster! We’re working very hard on the verse: it’s quite hard on the actors, but it has to be right. You can’t play Shakespeare to Italian schoolchildren and chuck it all about; it’s not what they want.”

There are, of course, any number of ways to present the play. This, Rachel said, will be a contemporary production — with a twist.

“It’s still set in Verona. But we’ve set the party scene in Buenos Aires: Capulet picks the setting at random.

“It’s a theme party: we have a very good choreographer, Jenni Middleton, and we’ve worked hard with her to get a sense of the heat and sensuality of what’s going on. There’s lots of fighting, some at the party, some elsewhere!”

Let’s be frank: many of us have sat through uncut Romeos and wondered if Juliet was ever going to die. This production, Rachel assured me, runs for just two hours, 15 minutes. It’s at the Kenton, Henley, on June 4 and 5, tickets 01491 575698 or 01865 305305.