Romeo And Juliet, Royal Opera House, London

Young lovers cast adrift

It's an odd sort of town, this Verona imagined by Kenneth MacMillan for his production of Romeo and Juliet. Three of the most prominent citizens are a trio of whores always cluttering up the market square with their rude antics. They do everything together, but one thing they never do is find any customers, although they do have a bizarre knack of occupying the attention of the three leading men, whom we might think rich and handsome enough to pull much prettier birds. Anyway, what are these tarts contributing to a tale of young love?

Another oddity is that Juliet's nurse is unable to recognise Romeo when she has a message for him, although she knew him well enough only the previous night. All of which indicates that we must not expect any plausibility or logic in the staging, for all its immense popularity. Too bad that audiences - or at least this audience - don't look for those qualities in ballet any more. I suppose the Prokofiev score remains an attraction, although even with Barry Wordsworth conducting the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, much of it still sounds too raucous for my liking.

The work is back at Covent Garden for yet another run to close the Royal Ballet's season, and the fact that the opening casts are dominated by guest dancers and substitutes sadly tells us something about the company's present state. One blessing is that this has brought back Alessandra Ferri after an absence of 18 years. She began her career here and proved her star quality very young, but nowadays Milan and New York see more of her.

If you remember the wonderfully direct simplicity of her early days, forget it. She still has impressive qualities, but very different ones, and to my mind less suited in this role. Her facial expressions are as vivid as ever, but that is not exactly the most important point in ballet. She performs (and so does her Romeo, Roberto Bolle, another Italian guest) with richly flamboyant gestures and an exaggerated manner, very much over the top on opening night.

Better that, I suppose, than the modest underplaying of the cast who took the next day's matinee. Miyake Yoshida, small and neat, performs very prettily, and is clearly conscious of the meaning of her dances, but she doesn't often project it strongly enough. Her Romeo, David Makhateli, hails from Georgia (the ex-Soviet state, not the American one) but lately has worked mostly in Houston; although here now as a guest, he is to join the Royal Ballet next season. An able performer, he does not look a very exciting one on this showing, and although attentive to his partner, there did not seem to be much electricity between them. There was a degree of overplaying in some of the smaller roles. Let's not name names, for I feel that the staging is more to blame than the cast.

And on the whole the opposite fault was more apparent: with one or two honorable exceptions, such as Thomas Whitehead, elegant as Count Paris, and William Tuckett's emphatic acting as Prince Escalus, the supporting roles tend to be pallid compared with the way they used to look. In particular, it seems bizarre that Tybalt, a key figure in the drama, is always cast nowadays with a mime.

The part was created for a strong leading dancer, and without comparable movement quality all his appearances lose a lot; above all his death, which ought to be a climax.

It might not be a bad idea if the directors and staff were to study the film of the original 1965 cast, not just for its stars but all the other performers; then they would at least have a n idea how much better the ballet could look. And if anyone suggests that today's dancers are more suited to virtuosity than to drama, wouldn't that (if true) be an argument for a different repertoire?

To 14 June (020-7304 4000)