Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet has been housed and dressed in Nicholas Georgiadis's designs for so long that it still comes as a shock to see the work in Birmingham Royal Ballet's 1992 production. Paul Andrews's painterly sets glow with a rich colour and intense decorative detail after Georgiadis's more monumental, darkly shadowed vision.
Although the Covent Garden-based Royal Ballet has been dancing Romeo and Juliet decades longer than the BRB, the ballet particularly suits the latter company. Its stormy, emotional plot and hustling crowd scenes play directly to the uninhibited, spontaneous style that has always been the BRB's main strength. And even if too much of the dancing currently lacks technical polish and attack, the company's great virtue is that everyone dances the ballet as if discovering its story for the first time.
Thursday's lovers had a genuine bloom of innocence and exuberance. Sergiu Pobereznic, whose floppy-haired charm hasn't altered in years, played Romeo true to type, as a puppyish flirt whose credulous heart is too fatally eager to fall in love. Ambra Vallo's Juliet started out as a pert little miss, so prettily and pubescently entranced by toys, boys and clothes that you could easily imagine her listening to the Veronese equivalent of S Club 7 with her nurse.
Once into the love scenes, however, Vallo's strong, powered lines and bright, sharp footwork facilitated a fierce impetuosity that deepened steadily throughout the ballet. Pobereznic may not be a virtuoso, but his easy grace and responsive partnering made him an excellent foil for her more high-flying attack. Even if their duets didn't resonate to the darkest and most ecstatic extremes of which MacMillan's choreography is capable, you could see their bodies and their imaginations sparking a passionate, mutual chemistry.
Backing them up were some equally vivid ensemble performances. David Justin's Tybalt was an enjoyably convincing career thug, his solid body and his sullen face twitching in constant anticipation for a fight. Dorcas Walters's Harlot did a lovely line in good-humoured vamping, and Rachel Hester found genuine moments of pain in the Nurse's plump, silly helplessness, as she watched Juliet's increasingly desperate plight. The fight scenes (which I haven't enjoyed so much in ages) were performed at flamboyantly full tilt, and everyone died with amazing vehemence and style. It was a real company performance.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0870 730 1234. A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
