Stuttgart Ballet's Romeo and Juliet boasted the great - very great - Marcia Haydee guesting as Lady Capulet. The ballet was made on her by John Cranko in 1962. Haydee now 70 was his muse. Her command of the stage is unsurpassed in my experience. The moment when she discovers the death of Tybalt is electrifying. Indeed, if the other principles had not danced so well, Haydee would have stolen the show.
      Few dance/actresses have ever matched Haydee's power, and who can forget the closing moments of Cranko's masterpiece, Onegin, after she has dismissed Onegin with nerves of steel, staring into the auditorium with all hope of love gone for ever? I'm still haunted by it and I remember the standing ovation, the longest I've experienced in ballet - and that includes Fonteyn and Nureyev.
      Cranko's version predates MacMillan's, and it looks very different in Jurgen Rose's Italianate sets. Some critics point to similarities between the two versions, but then freely admit that the steps are different. They should listen more closely to the music. Prokofiev's score has a built in scenario which follows Shakespeare's narrative step by step. It would be perverse to try to avoid it. Rightly neither MacMillan nor Cranko have departed an inch from Prokofiev's prescriptive writing. If you've never seen the ballet, and only listen to the music, you know what was happening.
      After the joy of seeing Haydee again, I warmed instantly to Katja Wunsche's Juliet and Friedemann Vogel's passionate and cleanly danced Romeo. But it was Filip Barankiewicz's Mercutio which made the strongest dramatic impact, fuelled by a fine technique, impeccable line, mischievous wit and a soaring jump.
Max Farber

Postscript: On 27 March Juliet was exquisitely danced by Elena Tentschikowa, a tremulous, weightless, passionate wight in the all-consuming thoes of first and greatest love, a performance so gripping it seemed emphatically that Marcia Haydee's spirit had infused itself into Tentschikowa's flying feet. Handsome support from Jason Reilly's Romeo and a bravura performance by Alexander Zaitsev as Mercutio – this is a role that catapults good dancers into something close to stardom: it has to be the music – were brilliantly complemented by a brooding, damgerous, charismatic Tybalt danced wonderfully by Nilolay Godunov.
      For those bred up on Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet, Cranko's version is an horizon-widening experience. We should see much more of his work on London's stages.
AC Grayling