With his new setting of Colin Towns's Orpheus Suite, David Bintley has completed the trilogy of jazz ballets that he started with Duke Ellington's Nutcracker and Shakespeare suites. All three works are now being performed in one programme - which would probably be too much jazz for one night were it not for the superb theatricality of Towns' score. As well as committing itself to a narrative logic rare in jazz, Towns' writing crackles with local colour - the inferno of percussion that drives the Hades section almost smells of scorched sulphur.
Not only does the score tell a story, it inspires some of the best choreography of the programme. Bintley has relocated the myth to an idealised Cotton Club, where Apollo, a legendary band leader teaches Orpheus and his band of Argonauts how to swing. In the Ellington suites, the emphatic down beat of the music often lulls Bintley into a repetitive foursquare rhythm. But Towns' eclectic influences - African, classical and rock - challenge Bintley to more supple palette. While there are lots of classic jazz moves in Orpheus (Iain Mackay as the hero does a particularly joyous jitterbug) Bintley can also explore more expressionist terrain, like the sullen broken-doll dance for the denizens of Hades.
Given the collaborative spark of some sections it is disappointing that music and choreography fail each other in the most critical parts of the ballet - the Orpheus and Eurydice duets. Towns's music gets all soupy here and Bintley - who doesn't tend to do love scenes well - falls back on reflex romantic waft. As for the fatal look that sends Eurydice back into Hades -if you blinked you'd miss it. Despite Steve Scott's vibrant staging - light drenched screens that range from hellfire red to polar blue - and a scintillating performance from Towns' Mask Orchestra, the vacuity of the lovers' relationship saps the ballet of its emotional charge. When we see the grieving Orpheus transformed into a constellation of stars there is no sense of restitution - just a mildly tacky Las Vegas stunt.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0870 730 1234. At Sadler's Wells from October 28. Box office: 020-7863 8000.
