Derek Deane's 1998 production of Romeo and Juliet, choreographed in the round, is largely successful in escaping the long shadow cast by the Kenneth MacMillan production for the Royal Ballet (in which Deane himself danced Romeo). This is a family ballet, with the English National Ballet's excellent dancers almost close enough to touch, and Deane ensures that there's always plenty going on. He has a bold touch with set pieces, particularly the Capulets' ball, in which he perfectly conveys the occasion's constricting, morbid formality. Roberta Guidi di Bagno's designs - blood-red velvets, stiff golds - elegantly complement this vision, and the dancers, Montagues and Capulets alike, look as if they have been plucked straight from a painting by Mantegna. The only tired note is sounded by the whores, who appear to have been lifted intact from the Royal Ballet version. Where is it written that all quattrocento prostitutes have frizzed-up problem hair?
Making his debut in this version of the ballet, Friedemann Vogel is an engaging Romeo. A principal dancer with the Stuttgart ballet, he is a performer of exceptional finish, with a soft jump and a high, clean line. He's good-looking, too, and a convincing Jack-the-Lad alongside Yat-Sen Chang's gadfly Mercutio and Cesar Morales's cool-cat Benvolio. What he isn't, by some distance, is a man in love. He goes through the motions with his fellow Stuttgart principal Alicia Amatriain, but remains safely within his emotional comfort zone, unruffled throughout.
Amatriain, by contrast, takes flying risks. At first her reading of Juliet seems saccharine, but she moves quickly to teenage abandon, and then to a fragile, disbelieving rapture. She's an assured dancer, soft and lissom, but her wretchedness and incomprehension following her brother's killing by Romeo warp and harden her. When she finally breaks, there's a heartbreaking inevitability about it.
Other strong performances from the same household include Fabian Reimair's overwound Tybalt and Jane Haworth's gothic Lady Capulet. As an introduction to classical ballet, this production delivers in spades. Younger audience-members were saucer-eyed throughout.
· Until June 25. Box office: 020-7838 3109.
