How do you change the path of young and vulnerable people growing up in London? If you’re Christian charity Intermission Youth Theatre (IYT), you get them into Shakespeare. Granted, it might not cater to every young person’s aspirations. But for those with a passion for acting, IYT offers opportunities for 16-25 year-olds to join the 25-strong company, and train with them over a nine-month period. You don’t audition, you interview. You also don’t have to pay the fees associated with drama schools and other training courses, as the purpose of IYT is to help those lacking opportunities to get into theatre.

Next year marks 10 years of IYT. Since it began, former members have gone on to study at drama schools and play parts in Doctor Who and Star Wars, to name but a few titles. Talent agents and representatives of the RSC, LAMDA and other creditable performing arts bodies continue to come to their performances and scout for talent. With Mark Rylance as a patron and Sylvia Syms as an ambassador, the work of IYT is being noticed and supported beyond the walls of St Saviour’s Church in Knightsbridge, where they’re latest show Double Trouble, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, is being performed.

Before each intake is given a Shakespearean text to work with, company director Darren Raymond gets the group to explore contemporary themes affecting their society. The result? Their shows are fresh and relevant adaptations of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. Double Trouble is set in ‘New England’, to a backdrop of an immigration crisis. Closed borders, hard-faced guards and displaced people pounding on metal barriers as they try to search for their loved ones forms the backdrop of the opening scene.

Gone are the twin slaves from Shakespeare’s original, in their place are female twins of the same social standing as their male twin counterparts. The two sets of twins have been separated as babies, with one male and female twin growing up in Shakespearean England, while the other brother and sister live in modern-day London (trust me, it works). Siblings Anthony (Donnavan Yates) and Dominique (Lucie Adewusi) who are granted access into New England as young adults, must drop their Shakespearean language and learn to “speak street” if they want to get by here. Unbeknown to them, they are entering the stomping ground of their twin siblings, and so unravels the familiar plot of mistaken identity and confusion that, in Raymond’s adaptation, nearly results in a shooting, an affair and an engagement being called off.

Raymond’s adaptation celebrates modern “street” dress, and smoothly fits our must-have accessories, such as smartphones and hair extensions, into the original’s plot. Snippets from Shakespeare’s text and several stunning moments – including a contemporary vs Tudor dance to Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 – bridge the gap between Shakespeare’s society and our own. The entire cast are invested in their roles, whether they be playing a lead or chorus part.

Like the original, Double Trouble is a comedy – but beyond the basic plot of confusion and mistaken identity, the humour here relies little on the original text. Instead, the cast and Raymond have worked as a collective to devise laughs fit to tickle a modern-day audience. The play ends with a happier immigration story – of a family reunited in the UK – than many asylum seekers experience in reality. It therefore feels fitting that the play’s epilogue is a more serious and cutting poem about the treatment of refugees, leaving us with plenty to reflect upon as we walk out into the wealthy London neighbourhood following the show.