This year is Frederick Ashton's centenary and, rightly, the Royal Ballet's coming season is dominated by the work of Britain's greatest classical choreographer, under the umbrella title Ashton 100. It is odd, though, and a little mealy-mouthed, that the opening show isn't more of a fireworks display in his honour. While Ashton would have been delighted by the inclusion of Nijinska's Les Noces, which he revered, he might have looked askance at the decision to open with Kenneth MacMillan's Requiem.
There is, of course, a big emotional charge to this ballet, with its luminous, arching lifts and ritualised patterns of mourning. And the final tableau, in which the cast circle around an empty spotlight, acts as a poignant reminder of Ashton's exuberant presence centre stage. (He always gave the best curtain calls.)
But Requiem was created in memory of another choreographer, John Cranko, and it would surely have been more fitting to open the evening with a yet more transcendent ballet: Ashton's own Symphonic Variations. As it was, the one work we saw of his was the 1937 Wedding Bouquet.
It was worth the wait - this sly, exquisite, lunatic ballet hasn't been seen at Covent Garden for more than 14 years. At its core is Gertrude Stein's prose poem about the tangled relationships and dotty personalities who gather at an old-fashioned wedding in rural France. Ashton's response is a comedy poised halfway between the wry sexual deviancy of Nijinska's Les Biches (another ballet he loved) and his own pastoral romp, La Fille Mal Gardée.
The result is a series of vignettes that turn increasingly, lovably preposterous as the ballet progresses. At first you worry that Ashton's drolly focused observations might disappear in the huge spaces of the Opera House, but the cast rapidly make the ballet's wit and nonsense irresistible. Zenaida Yanowksy as the disgracefully drunk Josephine is sublime, while Tamara Rojo as "her friend" Julia is madly tragic, stalking her invisible demons through the chorus of chatty guests. JohanKobborg as the bridegroom, drunk on champagne and his own deluded image of himself as a ladies' man, is wonderfully, subtly prattish, while Alina Cojocaru as his bride fizzes on the froth of her own happiness. The whole stage scintillates - a delicious amuse-bouche to whet our appetites for the rest of the season.
· In rep until November 8. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
