On visiting Liechtenstein, I felt the novelty of being in one of the world’s two doubly landlocked countries quickly fade. As long as the country was taken lightly, what with a Post Stamp Museum as its main tourist attraction in the capital, I could manage, even be amused; but as soon as any serious travel was contemplated – God, was it tedious.

Ben Power’s A Tender Thing presents Romeo and Juliet as rarely seen before; as an elderly, married couple, whose lines are taken from all across Shakespeare’s script in cut-and-paste fashion. This works fine at the outset, as a refreshing bonne bouche that teases your knowledge of the original, and for such playgoers who like quoting along to Shakespeare the evening is ideal: the balcony scene becomes raunchy, wizened banter – think stilettos turned slippers – its beauty, grace and amorous anticipation all slain at one fell swoop, a massacre at which the bard himself would boggle. “That’s so clever!” was the catchphrase of the night. We see a masterpiece on holiday, so we bubble and giggle.

But soon enough, we see that Power means business, when tragedy kicks in and Juliet is wheelchair-ridden. A Tender Thing parades all the known repertoire about illness in old age – the feeding of porridge (coughed out), the washing by linen cloth, the amnesia – to the background of a sentimental sea and John Woolf’s aimless music. My plaint is that it did not take an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet to deliver this hollow shell of a story, nor even a play; both author and director show little understanding of the stage, and a mimicking one of film – the scene-lengths, scene-changes, and flashbacks point only towards an half-empty cinema.

Juliet is avidly played by Kathryn Hunter, whose part – a hodgepodge of personages from the Nurse to Mercutio – denies her coherence, and indeed a truly great performance of which she is surely capable. Richard McCabe gives a kindly, bumbling Romeo one would fancy as a neighbour. His tough physique could have borne him onto smouldering heights of passion, to Oedipan roars of anguish – difficult for earlier, leaner Romeos – but, alas, McCabe kept in character. All in all, I had dry eyes and a heart unmoved throughout, as I did looking onto the unchanging scenery of Liechtenstein.

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

When did this play about Oxford undergrads turn into a chilling murder mystery? The first act starts off in a college room: two friends are bantering about Formal Hall, Philosophy tutorials, and a pub crawl last Friday night. The conversation, as well as the setting, is painfully familiar. The character’s room is furnished with a shapeless armchair and a gaudy nylon rug; the bed is unmade, and the desk is covered in papers in disarray. It feels like home. Thanks to the intimate space of Burton Taylor Studio, with the audience sitting face to face with the actors, there is no sense of narrative distance. We are here, at Oxford, looking at two girls and a guy created in our image.

Now, all good thrillers start with a sense of the familiar that we want to cling to, but that gets violently disturbed. And the macabre events of Isobel’s plot do come with a blow. But the question is: is our surprise that of the delighted horror fan in awe of the villain’s cunning, or is it a one of disbelief? Starting off by mocking university life, then adopting themes from the detective novels that one of the characters reads, the play is mildly ironic on so many levels that it is unclear how seriously we should take all this. Is it intended to be a dark play about the vanity of spoilt Oxford kids, a moral exploration of the ‘banality of evil’? Or is it a self-referential piece exploring our everyday lives and our high- and pop-culture obsessions? The game of catching cues from Agatha Christie, Stephen King, and The Shining seemed to preclude dwelling on the ethical issues behind a horrible crime.

But the answer, really, is that you could take it either way. Isobel leaves you in a place where you want to laugh, amused by the absurdity of last century’s crime stories coming to life in today’s Oxford. But at the same time, laughter feels uncomfortable; it is mixed with some genuine guilt and unease. The characters’ words seem at times to be borrowed and inauthentic (“I led her to believe that we were both invincible. In fact, it was just me,” Jack says, eager to come off as the antihero). And then at once, Jack is no longer striking a pose. In the monologue in which he remembers a childhood accident, he is not pretending; he is speaking his true heart, and therein lies horror.

The play’s great surprise ending made me forget all scepticism. Walking home from this late-night show, I caught myself looking anxiously back, scared of my own shadow. Then I knew that Isobel had done a great job. A literary game turned deadly serious, the play manages to catch you off-guard and give you the chills. You could take it as just a game, as a joke on the way we Oxonians tend to take ourselves and literature too seriously. Or you could let go of the critical stance and let yourself be very scared.

FOUR STARS

Isobel is showing at the Burton-Taylor studio until Saturday 27th October, 9.30pm. Tickets are £6 

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