Last night Ross Stretton launched his first season as the Royal's artistic director with a production that was less a display of modernising ambition than a reassurance of his classical loyalties. Don Quixote is a sprawling 19th-century comedy whose mix of nonsensical farce and Spanish flavoured classicism would seem perfectly pitched for the Royal's most conservative audiences.
In fact, the ballet has had an interestingly uncertain history in London. While recent performances by the Kirov have been popular, the Royal's previous attempt to stage the ballet, in Mikhail Baryshnikov's streamlined and slightly ironic production, floundered badly. Audiences did not take its irredeemably dopey love story to their hearts and the dancers themselves seemed embarrassed by its histrionics and overeacted to the choreography's signature swagger.
Stretton has brought in a different production - Rudolf Nureyev's 1966 version. This is closer to the Kirov's more solidly traditional approach than Baryshnikov, and it may do better if only because audiences have become more familiar with the ballet. But Stretton has a problem still in getting his dancers to strike a spark from this production's rather doughy texture.
The ballet's corps of Gypsies and La Manchan youth are an essential feature of Don Quixote's local colour and comedy, and though the dancers click their fingers and heels with gusto it is more as self-conscious tourists than as a genuinely larky crowd and the lack of a live collective personality makes the staging seem even dustier than its actual years.
Performances perked up hugely at soloist level with he Zenaida Yanowsky as a dreamily musical Queen of the Dryads, Alina Cojocru a detail-perfect Amour, Marianela Nunez as an seductively elegant Street Dancer and Luke Heydon an addled, fluttering fop of a Gamache. Christopher Saunders was a gamey old Don, full with vision and clutching at straws of antique gallantry.
Ultimately the ballet takes its tone from the two principal lovers. Tamara Rojo takes the flirty, flighty heroine, Kitri, rachets up the level of technical flaunt dramatically, spinning off double and triple turns in her fouettés as if they were casual favours, pausing mid arabesque to preen and glint. No one can handle a fan with such killer aplomb.
But it is crucial to the role that Kitri comes over as loveable as well as high maintenance and though Rojo radiates an endearing tomboy energy she never seems quite passionate enough with her Basilio, Johan Kobborg. Kobborg is a dancer as impressive as his partner Rojo and together they generate a nicely mischievous chemistry - but it never quite ignites into anything tender or erotic.
· In rep until November 14. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
