I once angered Peggy Ashcroft, herself a famous Juliet, by saying I thought this was a defective tragedy: that a tumultuous first half was followed by a contrived ending depending on the faulty postal service. But I still think West Side Story is better plotted: the crucial message there fails to get through because Anita (the Nurse figure) is almost gang-raped by the Jets. In the theatre, I've had mixed responses to countless revivals of Shakespeare's play. I remember a vivacious one by Michael Bogdanov (1986) set in a world of high finance and fast cars that I dubbed "the Alfa Romeo and Juliet". There was also a prodigiously athletic version from Iceland's Vesturport company at the Young Vic in 2003, in which Romeo made love to Juliet while suspended from a chandelier. On the screen, I unfashionably preferred Zeffirelli's 1968 movie to Baz Luhrmann's trendy 1996 one.
But mention of Zeffirelli reminds me of a great production he did at the Old Vic in 1960: all seething crowds and Veronese colour. John Stride and Joanna Dunham (replacing Judi Dench) were the lovers when I saw it, but my abiding memory is of Alec McCowen's brilliant Mercutio: he died unforgettably by maintaining, until the last second, the mocking tone of the sardonic jester. Easily the best version since then was Rupert Goold's sensational 2010 RSC production. By putting Mariah Gale's Juliet and Sam Troughton's Romeo in modern dress while everyone else wore Renaissance costume, he emphasised the lovers' isolation. Add in Jonjo O'Neill's manic Mercutio and eruptions of scalding heat, and you had a production that caught the play's intemperate wildness and disguised its narrative defects.
• What are your favourite versions of Romeo and Juliet? Let us know in the comments thread below.
• Shakespeare's plays – as you like them: read the series so far
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