Against a Giottoesque backdrop of medieval villas, the Montagues and Capulets are wheeled around on industrial scaffolding like perversely overdressed builders. If they are meant to be menacing contemporary gangs, they should stop dancing like Pan's People.Frankly, instead of bellowing about law and order, the Prince (Michael Cormick) just needs to call in the fashion police and save us all from the tat of sub-Versace silk gowns and sequined jeans. The masked ball is also so gobsmackingly tacky, with sprayed shop dummies for gold statues, that you wonder if the vizards are merely keeping the guests dropping jaws in place.To be fair, Lorna Want – playing Juliet – has adolescent sweetness and, at just 15, is very assured. But her singing voice needs to mellow and Andrew Bevis's floppy-haired Romeo is pretty bland.

Generally the acting is laughably melodramatic as is G?rd Presgurvic's derivative score – think the theme tune of Neighbours with frightful gusts of orchestral grandiosity. S?n Stephan's Friar Lawrence – having a high-decibel crisis of faith – wasn't the only one to ask: "How much more can we go through?"Oh for West Side Story's catchier numbers and for Shakespeare's original poetry Black and Freeman's paraphrases are risibly crass. Did I really hear Romeo saying– by way of his last farewell to Juliet – "It was the night of my life. Thanks"? Bevis and Want commit joint suicide at top speed – in under two hours – and who can blame them? This show, by rights, should be dead in the water by next week.Measure For Measure Malaya is a more interesting, off-West End colonial interpretation of Shakespeare's problem play about moral fundamentalists, power and corruption.Director Phil Willmott translates the action to the titular British outpost in the 1930s, where we find governmental offices looking faintly shabby and exotic with broken shutters and tropical creepers. Andy de la Tour's Duke is a decadent High Commissioner, swilling cognac with a cynical expression before prowling around disguised in a priest's dog collar. David Partridge's Lucio (actually a conflation of several characters) is a laddish soldier making free with native prostitutes, while Richard Dillane's Angelo is a strict, buttoned up District Officer who – while poring over regulations – is clearly feeling the heat.

He ends up imperiously abusing the devout Asian nun, Lourdes Faberes' Isabella, who comes pleading for judicial mercy.The race relations – with nasty presumptions lurking behind paternalism - add to this play's sexual tensions Unfortunately though, the acting is very uneven. You never quite believe Dillane's Angelo is obsessed with Christian ethics, and Faberes' meek Isabella needs more intellectual vigour to fire him up when they wrestle over theological doctrines.Finally, the innocence of young love has been lost in Eden. This new play by Eugene O'Brien (transferring from the Abbey Theatre, Dublin) is a two-hander that intercuts lonely monologues by a dissolute husband and his disappointed wife. Their reminiscences chart one boozy evening in small town Southern Ireland. Billy (Don Wycherley) recalls reeling round a night-club, obsessively imagining he's going to lay a young babe.

By contrast, Breda (Catherine Walsh) hopes for a while to rekindle their marital romance.O'Brien can be a humorous, humane and vividly descriptive storyteller but the plot seems terribly slow moving. The acting is quiet and sharply observed, directed by Conor McPherson. However, if you've seen McPherson's own superb intertwined monologues like The Weir and Port Authority, you can't help feeling this is a pale imitation.k.bassett independent.co.uk'Hamlet': West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds (0113 213 7700) to 30 Nov; 'Romeo And Juliet: The Musical': Piccadilly, London W1 (020 7369 1734) to 22 Feb; 'Measure For Measure Malaya': Riverside, London W6 (020 8237 1111) to 30 Nov; 'Eden': Arts Theatre, London WC2 (020 7836 3334) to 11 Jan. The shoes – they're what you notice first with Dance Theater of Harlem: the individually dyed satin toe-shoes. As the women, one by one, thread onto the stage from the wings in their opening number, you find yourself mentally checking through the spectrum of flesh tones on their feet.