Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet review - Shakespeare without the words, with music to die for

1965 was a year of change in Britain. It saw the abolition of the death penalty and the arrival of the Race Relations Act. It was the year of the Mary Quant miniskirt and “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones. While cinema-goers queued around the block to see The Sound of Music (a critical flop), the Royal Opera House had another kind of hit on its hands.

A new three-act ballet closely based on Shakespeare’s text, it presented Romeo and Juliet – in tune with the zeitgeist – as real, impulsive, hormonally charged teenagers. After the curtain, the standing ovation went on for 40 minutes.

Sixty years on Kenneth MacMillan’s first full-evening work is staged by ballet companies around the world, its renown having long since overtaken that of the 1940s Russian production which partially inspired it. Sergei Prokofiev’s urgent score is of such lustrous quality that even two decades as the theme music for The Apprentice has failed to tarnish it. Those dissonant string chords we hear as the Prince of Verona arrives to stop the carnage on the streets speak of violence as raw and shattering as the day the composer imagined them. Prokofiev completed the first two acts in less than a month, and that immediacy can be heard. Orchestral musicians love revisiting this work for its gorgeous lyricism, its subtly intertwined themes representing – Wagner-like – characters and situations, and its distribution of important moments to every section in the pit. The lower brass have an absolute ball.The pace of the story-telling is inevitably set by the music – I can’t be alone in wishing that Mercutio didn’t malinger quite so long before dying, but the idea was Shakespeare’s first. Even so, in MacMillan’s hands the vitality and sheer density of stage business, not to mention dance steps, on Verona’s market square gives scenes that might otherwise seem like padding a hurtling urgency and excitement. The mass street fights look real, the action filling every inch of the stage. And when, in Act II, Romeo finally abandons his better judgement and accepts Tybalt’s challenge to avenge the death of his best friend, you almost forget that this is ballet, a historical costume drama, a carefully choreographed duel with safety tips on the blades. Every heart leaps into every mouth as we witness what could easily be a knife fight on the Mile End Road.

Casting is critical in this ballet, not because MacMillan’s choreography isn’t fully capable of telling the story by itself, but because the nuance of characters’ motivations and desires is left to each interpreter. The days are long gone when every Romeo was your typical Jack the Lad and nothing more. Impulsive, yes, and maybe a little feckless, but the opening night’s Romeo found ways to let you know that he was a dreamer, a pacifist and an idealist too (pictured above and below: Matthew Ball as Romeo with Yasmine Naghdi as Juliet). Naghdi even showed aspects of Juliet I hadn’t seen before. A secret smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth when she was trying to be grown up and serious would momentarily break into an unguarded grin. We saw it when, at her parents’ party, she registered the effect of dancing with this strange masked boy so soon after her polite official suitor. Even when partnered by Paris, she showed how a young girl’s world can change in the space of 48 bars of flattering attention. Like all the best Royal Ballet principals, Naghdi’s acting blends seamlessly with her dance technique. Her reverse bourrées, those tiny travelling steps on point that give the impression of floating, are so expressive that they seem to give us a glimpse into Juliet's retreating mind. The little leaps she throws off in her dance with Paris are as quick, light and silent as the opening and closing of a butterfly’s wings.No ballet production is completely set in stone, and this R and J, as it is known to its legions of fans, has undergone significant changes over its six decades. The late Nico Georgiadis revised his own original designs to render them both simpler and more monumental. The family tomb in which the drugged Juliet awakes is now that much more terrifying with its looming religious statuary. Dramatically too, the pacing seems, well, pacier, though whether today’s conductors have actually ramped up the tempi is open to debate. Even certain features of the choreography have changed. I distinctly remember in the early 1990s seeing the grieving Romeo – probably Jonathan Cope – holding Darcey Bussell’s Juliet upside down by the ankles and shaking her hard in a desperate attempt to revive her. Her entire body wobbled like jelly, her arms and hair hanging to the floor. It looked highly risky and presumably others thought so too because that bit of choreographic business had gone by the time of the next revival. Romeo still lugs the lifeless body around like a side of beef, but the right way up.

Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet has had more than 400 performances at Covent Garden and been seen by tens of thousands more in streamings and cinema relays. No fewer than 10 couples have been cast in the main roles across this 60th anniversary run, with one of the most exciting pipped for this week's live cinema relay.

• Romeo and Juliet in rep at the Royal Ballet & Opera to 26 May
• Live relay to selected cinemas 20 March with Encore screenings until 30 March
• More dance reviews on theartsdesk