Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe, London, review: This is an emotionally fierce and fiery Romeo and Juliet

Daniel Kramer's production, which reinterprets the star-crossed lovers as modern-day teenagers and includes Village People's 'YMCA' as the main number at the Capulets' ball, is bound to upset the purists

Kirsty Bushell as Juliet and Edward Hogg as Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet' at the Globe (Robert Workman )

Weather-wise, it was a cold and wet start to this year's season at Shakespeare's Globe. Onstage, though, the case was different. This is an emotionally fierce and fiery Romeo and Juliet, the raw intensity of the central story coming across all the stronger for having to burst through an atmosphere that often goes for broke on Gothic wackiness. The production by Daniel Kramer, artistic director of ENO, is – by intent, I should imagine – not calculated to endear itself to the faction that got rid of Emma Rice from the top job here, although she has stayed around to oversee and contribute to this “Summer of Love” season, her second and last.

There is unabashed use of contemporary sound and lighting effects in Kramer's staging and what looks like a giant bat is stretched over the proceedings. The aesthetic is touched by Tim Burton. Animating the Montague-Capulet feud: guys in bowlers, thin braces and clown make-up thwack each other with baseball bats or land boxing-gloved blows. Guns are also toted. The mood at points shows how parents can be repressive through unheeding irresponsibility. I have heard the Village People's recording of “YMCA” played in many different dramatic contexts but I never imagined that I would hear it used as the main number at the Capulets' ball. My beef is very much not with the men making friends at this shindig (there's a chap in a rubber crocodile suit who gets fresh with a bare-chested guy who's taken his headdress off in preparation). No, it's with the older generation and their faintly raddled hedonism, who seem to leave no room for the blossoming of Juliet who is here simply sidelined until she sees Romeo and trudges up to him, sparking the lyrical banter and giddy, abandoned rapport that sees them bouncing against the pillars of the Globe stage.

Tossing her curly mane, Kirsty Bushell is superb in the honest way her forthright, comically impatient Juliet has no truck with balconies but comes right down stage to parry with Edward Hogg's endearing, nervously ardent Romeo. “I have no joy of this contract tonight,” she declares. “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning”. But, giving the lie to this, Bushell beautifully shows that Juliet's instincts can barely keep pace with themselves. Kramer has intercut scenes and speeded things up so that here the heroine's bed, as she awaits Romeo, who has now been banished for Tybalt's murder, becomes the hub of a fever of activity (her cousin's body is slumped across it like non-naturalistic impediment) and of bad advice from Blythe Duff snippy Scots nurse and Harish Patel's grandiloquent Friar.

Her parents' insistence that Juliet marry Paris and the insensitive ostentation of their plans are particularly desolating here (you really believe that Gareth Snooks's chilling Capulet would rather see his daughter die on the streets than disobey him). The momentum that sweeps the star-crossed lovers, let down by everyone in authority, to a double suicide, is felt to be shatteringly cruel and (after an earlier gun-spree by Romeo) the image on which the lights abruptly die. With a vivid female Mercutio from Golda Rosheuvel complicating the dynamic with Tybalt, Benvolio and the hero, this is a version of the play that offers pungent food for thought while making a strong connection with the audience. It whets the appetite for the upcoming shows in this valedictory season.