Seeing this play is less like going to the theatre and more like stepping straight into the middle of a Renaissance painting. Teatro del Carretto's version of Shakespeare's love story is a visual cornucopia in which masked actors play alongside beautiful carved marionettes.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between the two, except when the production plays tricks with perspective: Juliet is mostly represented by a puppet as a fragile slip of a girl, her face frozen between childhood and adolescence; her parents are actors who tower like menacing giants.

Played on a raised wooden stage, under which a dark hell may be lurking, the company creates a secret world of trap doors and lurking violence that has a gloss of domesticity.

There is a commedia dell'arte robustness about it that is rather appealing. We actually see rather more of the Capulets' pustule-faced servants, ducks and dog than we do of Romeo. With much of the original excised, including the Mantua scenes, and the story told entirely from Juliet's point of view, the play becomes less a tragedy of fate and much more domestic. This should make it more moving but, curiously, this is one of the least involving Romeo and Juliets I've ever seen.

Perhaps it's because the combination of sumptuous visuals, Juliet's voice-overs and snatches from Bellini's opera I Capuleti e I Montecchi lead to sensory overload. Carried away by its own beauty, the production quickly becomes mannered, almost narcissistic. Only the unexpected thumps and bangs from behind and under the stage give a sense of reality. For all its good looks this is a technically clunky show.

At the end, the dead lovers appear on stage on a raised tomb. She is in sugar-pink voile with a glittery bodice. He is draped in cherry-red velvet. This chocolate box vision put me in mind of nothing but Sleeping Beauty Barbie and her prince, Ken.

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