Steven McRae replaced the injured Johan Kobborg in this performance, and for all his slightness and boyishness gave a highly creditable account of himself. He is a neat dancer, with a pure line and a wonderful crispness and accuracy of movement; there is art as well as technique in his execution which promises fair. Once or twice early on there was a wobble in his lifting, despite the feather-lightness of Alina Cojocaru, but as the evening progressed he grew in assurance. For classical leading roles a dancer has to project size, confidence, charisma, absorbing space on the stage by mere presence; this is a function of attitude, although it is helped by physical breadth and height; so a slightly-built dancer has to expand himself psychologically into the audience's perception of him as the principle man on stage; this is something McRae is sure to be able to do.
      The delight of the evening was unquestionably and, in the best sense, predictably Alina Cojocaru. This joyous ballerina transforms herself into a young girl, playful and inexperienced, emotionally instinctive and as quicksilver in her responses, vulnerable, passionate, quintessentially feminine. There is no need to remark on the lightness and fleetness, the suppleness and airiness, of her dancing; it is exquisite, a deep pleasure to watch, and the expression of a remarkable dancerly sensibility. We live in good times balletically, spoiled with talent on the Covent Garden stage.
      This applies, as always, to Jose Martin, such a mainstay in the supporting roles, as are Bennet Gartside and Yohei Sasaki. They are stars; in any lesser company they would take top billing as such. Gartside was a brooding, menacing Tybalt, a bully, always on the edge of violence. Sasaki partnered Martin excellently; it is striking how much acting talent runs through the company, perfectly answering to the theatricality of Macmillan's choreography, which with a scalpel filets its origin and shapes it perfectly round Prokofiev's score.
      If there is one fault with this rendition of the tale, it wholly leaves out a reconciliation scene, which in Shakespeare's version is integral to its meaning. Knowing this, the abruptness of the ballet's ending is a truncation. Balletically, of course, it works well, because a double suicide intermitted by Juliet's awakening does not lend itself to fulsome treatment in dance. Romeo's stabbing of Paris is a wasted gesture in the ballet; some sharp choreographic talent might potentiate Macmillan here by finding a way to reconfigure the end by ridding us of Paris's murder and engineering a reconciliation if need be, Lanchbery-style, by reintroducing part of the ball music and the themes for the opposed families as a coda.
      Still, Romeo and Juliet makes for a deeply satisfying night in Covent Garden, especially as so ably and in Cojocaru's case so beautifully danced. As always, the orchestra was on good form; Boris Gruzin's empathy with Prokofiev's intentions seemed complete.
AC Grayling