The Kenneth Branagh Company production of Romeo and Juliet is unfathomably boring, unfeasibly incoherent and unconscionably passionless. There is no chemistry between the leads, no clarity in the language and no cleverness in the vision which underpins proceedings. As a textbook example of over-priced, under-baked Shakespeare, this is unsurpassed.

A plague on both your houses.

The ticket cost £95. It was not a premium seat and, by some distance, was not the most expensive seat in the house. I mention this because nothing could persuade me to sit through the second Act of this woefully inadequate production of Shakespeare’s most famous romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.

Despite being directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford, the same team who provided a beautiful, touching and memorable The Winter’s Tale when this season opened, this Romeo and Juliet has nothing to recommend it. It is almost a poster production for those who want to cease revivals of Shakespeare: it leaves you mystified about why there is a fuss about the value of Shakespeare in modern theatre as it suggests, firmly, there is none.

Central to the flaws here are casting catastrophes.

Marisa Berenson, a star for reasons unconnected with Shakespeare, is unaccountably cast as Lady Capulet. She has a few decades on her Lord, a stiff Michael Rouse, and looks more like Juliet’s great grandmother than her mother, but she knows how to wear a frock and that she does with real panache. Comprehending the language and communicating emotion are two powers this Vogue “IT girl of the Seventies” girl does not posses.

Zoë Rainey, far too young, is shoe-horned into the thankless role of Lady Montague. Unluckily for her, Berenson gets the best frocks. There is no sense of marriage or even tired association between her and her Lord, a dreary Chris Porter, and, alas, it is all to easy to see from where Romeo’s complete lack of personality and charisma comes.

As the Nurse, Meera Syal gives a masterclass in flushing a fabulous part down the toilet. For the most part, she seems to be more Nurse Ratched than Juliet’s Nurse. She clumps around the stage, frumpy and disengaged, a triumph in phlegmatic Casualty Extra acting. Syal is capable of much better than this, so the choices here are even more disturbing.

Jack Colgrave Hirst is completely at sea as Benvolio, the apparently gay disciple of Mercutio who appears to have the hots for Romeo. What the point of this is remained blithely unclear, although it might be that Act Two provided meek explanations. Ansu Kabia’s Tybalt was execrable, every word a dagger to the soul, every awkward stage step a shudder-inducing misery. His death could not come soon enough.

Publicity photographs for this Romeo and Juliet suggested a central couple wholly engaged in hot passion, interlocked hearts, twin rhythms. Their appearance as the leads in Branagh’s film version of Cinderella suggested a real spark, a true frisson, the enmeshed fibre of glistening love between them. As Romeo and Juliet, however, Richard Madden and Lily James are dire, drab and dull. Dull, dull, dull.

Neither of them has any comprehension of a single word they are saying or, if they do, no ability to convey that meaning. Delivery of verse is flat, disengaged and without any style. Each has a startled look about them, as if they were a fox caught in a very pernicious trap, with nothing but their former glory in other places to rely upon. There is not the remotest sense of love, romance, passion, lust or any other positive emotion between humans in any aspect of their performances. They don’t act with each other; they say the words to each other. Badly. Very badly.

Both performers are too old for their roles, but neither have the ability to play younger convincingly. The Balcony Scene is the worst I have ever endured. Yes, the staging here does not help – it is preposterous to have Juliet swigging out of a champagne bottle and the balcony is set so low that Romeo could easily reach Juliet should he be so inclined – but the butchery of the words, some of the most powerful and resonant in Shakespeare’s arsenal, was unforgivable.

Madden stands in stark contrast to his former Games Of Thrones brother, Kit Harrington, who, in the next street from the Garrick Theatre, where Romeo and Juliet is now playing, is doing much better work in Doctor Faustus. He suffers from appalling costuming which does nothing for his physique, the sword fighting he is required to execute is primary school standard (Bret Yount, what went wrong?), and he is hampered by the uncomfortable and forced Mercutio/Benvolio triangle he finds himself in. But, in the end, it is simple: Madden is not equal to the task.

His Romeo is a stodgy, glum, real estate agent with no trace of divine fire about his heart, soul or loins. You wonder if his parents love him, let alone the daughter of a house locked in bitter rivalry with his own. There is nothing lovable or adorable about this Romeo. It’s a performance devoid of life. Juliet’s famous inquiry – O Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo? – has never been more apt.

James is no better as Juliet. She is burdened with a ludicrous wig, a dark and fountain-like explosion of hair, which sits awkwardly on her and seems to shrink her stature. Her costumes don’t give her any sense of youth-not-quite-in-bloom and, as with Madden, she is unequal to the task of speaking the language with any kind of insight, integrity or inspiration. Passages which soar ordinarily are here, Dodo-like, incapable of flight.

On film and television, James can display real warmth, quirky independence, enduring charm. On the strength of this outing, those virtues are a product of the magic of the camera, because nothing about James’ Juliet raises enough heat to coddle an egg. Her voice is gruel thin, devoid of dexterity or depth, either of colour or tone. Her sentences are flatline pulses of painful dead sound.

When this Romeo and Juliet begins, Sir Derek Jacobi kicks off proceedings by lending the considerable weight of his mellifluous, golden syrup voice to the opening exposition. This is thrilling, suggesting an evening of engaged, evocative communion with Shakespeare’s text. It might have been better had that opening not have occurred – nothing in what follows Jacobi’s arresting opening volley of richly toned words, plump with comprehension and skill, including Jacobi’s own performance as Mercutio, comes close to it.

Playing Mercutio was always a surprising option for Jacobi. Seeing the performance does not lessen the surprise.

Without question, Jacobi fares better than anyone else in navigating a path through the directorial conceit which is constantly engaging and which makes sense of the language. His Queen Mab speech is the absolute high point of the evening. His final speech, as death dawns upon his Malvolio, reminds one of the virtues of softly, but perfectly enunciated, delivery of text; just as blood spurts freely from the wound bequeathed by Tybalt’s sword, so does Jacobi freely wrest intelligence and grace from every phrase, every carefully modulated word. He is a joy to hear, a master in action.

But…

Jacobi is also having a laugh at the expense of the character. He can only play Mercutio as an older man, sure, but the decision to make Mercutio an old, gay Uncle with a penchant for youngsters and an old Club Act dance sensibility is what defines this turn. In Jacobi’s care, Mercutio provides the laughs, the silly extremes, the excess. Given Syal’s Nurse is so dour, this is welcome, but only to a point. The cost is Mercutio’s brooding impetuosity and virile assuredness, both assets that may have assisted Madden in finding the measure of his Romeo.

While Jacobi may give the best performance of the night, it is not the right performance. Mercutio needs to serve the plot; stardom ought lie elsewhere in Romeo and Juliet. Here, he plays Mercutio as though he was being played by Jacobi’s character in Vicious. It’s interesting and curious, but it doesn’t assist the production.

Jacobi would have been better playing the Nurse. Now that would have assisted this production.

Interestingly, at least in Act One, and apart from Jacobi, the most compelling work comes from the least expected places – the almost incidental characters. Taylor James is commanding as the Prince and the air is alive with engaged rigour when he is present. He is so assured in his initial scene that when his decree for peace is defied, there is a momentary fear for Romeo’s imminent execution – well, fear might be the wrong word. In any event, James makes what he is given to do count.

Often, the best acting comes in reactions, even silent ones. Here, Tom Hanson and Samuel Valentine provide gravitas to scenes in which they say nothing when those that do speak fail to create interest.

Full responsibility for this theatrical carnage must rest with Branagh and Ashford. The casting was theirs (Lucy Bevan has much for which to answer) and the execution was theirs. Why wouldn’t Madden and James trust them to shepherd them through the rigours of Shakespeare, especially with Jacobi in the cast? The whole thing is an egregious error of gigantic proportions.

Far too much effort has been expended on trying to “sex up” the play. Jacobi’s camp star turn, the nonsense with the champagne bottle in the Balcony scene, stunt casting and age/colour/gender blind casting – all of these add nothing to Shakespeare and most positively detract from it, at least on this occasion. Mercutio’s curse is otiose – both Capulet and Montague houses have been plagued by inept directorial judgment.

The decision to set the play in a faux Fellini Fifties Italy, centred around marble pillars and a town square that would have been better for Julius Caesar, with a kind of Sopranos/The Godfather vibe breezing through haphazardly, reaps no dividends. Christopher Oram’s set is as dull as most performances and devoid of the one thing which should keep the play propelled – heat. The heat of Italy, the heat of family feuds, the heat of passion – all are absent in this morgue-like marble tomb.

Rather than being a place where unimaginable beauty can shine, Oram’s balcony is a boring slab of poorly positioned, almost fascist architecture. Solidified play doh would have had the same effect. Nothing about the design makes sense or enhances or illuminates the text. It’s a sterile, cold and uninviting environment for a story powered by passionate commitment to causes, personal and communal.

Patrick Doyle provides serviceable incidental music and a song for Juliet which, though uneventful, was sweet enough, and provided a moment when James seemed fully engaged. Howard Hudson supplies efficient lighting, but nothing superb; there is never a sense of jocund day tiptoeing across any misty mountaintop for instance. Indeed, there is never a sense of daylight of any kind, but this is more because of Oram’s hermetically sealed marble vault effect.

Romeo and Juliet is all but sold out, at prices which are too high for excellent productions let alone this tiresome absurdity, and that is likely to mean that new audiences, lured to the theatre on the promise of a Cinderella rematch, will leave confused, possibly frightened, about a future encounter with Shakespeare. That is the real tragedy here.