There is a special poignancy about this English National Ballet production of Manon: Agnes Oaks is to retire this coming spring, and comes to the role in the last moments of her career. It is a great pity that she is to retire: her skills and facilities as a dancer are in wonderful shape, and the maturity of her acting interprets the character of Manon beautifully, bringing the artless-seeming calculation of her ambiguous nature - easily seducible by furs and diamonds, simultaneously capable of great passion - to full realisation.
       Des Grieux is danced by Agnes Oaks' real-life partner Thomas Edur, which explains the sympathy and confidence of their work together in the superb passages created by Macmillan as master of the love-duet. Edur is a handsome and powerful presence, and his dancing is a text-book of classical discipline, which to some eyes might occasionally seem at odds with the asymmetries demanded by Macmillan's choreography. There is a hint of this in the Des Grieux solos, those yearning, reaching stations of shape in which Des Grieux announces his love. This is profoundly interesting to observe: it is a paradigm of the classical style adapting to a lexicon of movement that stretches the classical forms in new directions; dancers trained in the orbit of the Russian schools have a depth of correctness which dancers trained in London or New York can more easily move beyond.
       Oaks and Edur are compelling at the centre of the story, and they are wonderfully supported by the fire and abandon of Dmitri Gruzdyev's amoral Lescaut, by a superb Elena Glurdjidze, and by fine, neat, spirited dancing and acting by the company. ‘Spirited' is the word: there was real relish, energy, attack, commitment and definition in the dancing, and a vividness and richness in every characterization, even in minor roles. The English National Ballet is something to be reckoned with: it has become a necessity to see them.
       By this production's spare design a satisfying amount of physical space is given to the dance, and the company made good use of it. The sleazy purlieus of Paris is represented by beggars and prostitutes; the high-class brothel is represented by a chandelier and a gaming table; the Louisiana port by a ship's prow on the backcloth; its swamps by stage mist lightly and hintingly applied (recently at Covent Garden Des Grieux and Manon - in an otherwise outstanding production - disappeared under a thick fog as they lay exhausted, Manon dying, on the boards; it also mainly obscured the dream-figures of their story, passing in the background). It might be that the Coliseum design was arranged with the portability interests of a traveling company foremost in mind; that is to the good; but in addition to maximizing space it also focused attention where it belongs: on the atmosphere created by the choreography and its interpretation, and that is even more to the good.
       The orchestra was outstanding; the Massenet-based score was a thing of beauty in their hands, and in conjunction with the sincerity and commitment of the dancing, made this one of the most moving Manons I've seen.
AC Grayling