I have probably mentioned it before, but when there was a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the theatre in Sheffield our deputy headmistress took along a party from school and was scandalised when we treated it as pantomime. It was the play set for O level that year.

Rather than sitting in respectful silence before the very bare stage - it was between 'proper' performances of other plays so there were two benches and a rudimentary archway between - we oohed and aahed, we clapped and cheered, reacted to the fights and deaths, but there was dead silence when the actors spoke.

The actors were obviously expecting the normal lack of interaction, and for the first few minutes were just going through the motions - and then something magical happened...

Poor Miss White. She sat with her face in her hands and missed all the encouragement we got, all the cheeky gestures and the young men strutting their stuff like the Jets and the Sharks, all the older generation cutting eachother dead. It never happens in any filmed production I have seen, so I keep the memory of that occasion most fondly, as something closer to the original version than anything Miss White would have approved of.