Romeo and Juliet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, touring

A Romeo and Juliet to die for...

"Have you ever seen the real Romeo and Juliet?" a woman asked a friend. "I have, at Covent Garden, twice." I guessed she was referring to Kenneth MacMillan's 1965 ballet, the version endlessly revived by the RB, the one that gave Christopher Gable and Lynn Seymour their greatest roles, but certainly not the first set to Prokofiev's 1938 score.

"Have you ever seen the real Romeo and Juliet?" a woman asked a friend. "I have, at Covent Garden, twice." I guessed she was referring to Kenneth MacMillan's 1965 ballet, the version endlessly revived by the RB, the one that gave Christopher Gable and Lynn Seymour their greatest roles, but certainly not the first set to Prokofiev's 1938 score.

It's an easy mistake, not just because the 1965 version itself is ubiquitous, but because the shadow it casts over today's choreographers is long. In commissioning a new R&J from the young Brit Christopher Hampson, Royal New Zealand Ballet was no doubt banking on a sterling dose of MacMillan filtering through. And so it proved, but in a way that was unexpected. Rather than struggle to emulate the best in the famous staging (the duets, and only the duets, in truth), Hampson has approached the giant in reverse. He made a list of the things he disliked in MacMillan, and set about doing better. The result is a stylish three-act structure where the interest is more evenly spread, the comedy sharper, the fights more frightening, and Mercutio's death no longer a yearned-for event. I can't be alone in itching to give Romeo's friend the coup de grâce when he limps around cracking jokes for ages. Hampson, by contrast, keeps Mercutio's wound a secret from his mates until the last moment, saving them the difficulty of sustaining expressions of deep concern, and building a neater, more tragic death.

Perhaps it helped that this Kiwi Mercutio (Jacob Sofer) was a dead-ringer for Ross on Friends. Whatever, he flies through Hampson's twiddly footwork like a charm. Craig Lord's Romeo is less intriguing, but makes an elegant partner to Megan Futcher's Juliet, who in turn starts out sweetly unremarkable, but by the time she gets to the phial has shown us a fearsomely complex young woman.

Hampson's Verona comes via La Dolce Vita, peopled with winkle-pickered women and tie-straightening boys with quiffs. Romeo is a café waiter, flirting with the best-looking customers. Fights are fought with knives, chains and (less advisedly) cartoon grunts, and it's fun having tables to turn over. Tracy Grant's sleek designs enable the action to move from piazza to balcony to tomb with little fuss. And Hampson finds neat solutions to old problems: a harlequinade in place of the interminable street dance, fulsome evidence of an affair between Tybalt and Lady Capulet; and a climactic ending where Romeo's fading consciousness brushes with Juliet's waking. If this were the only R&J I ever saw, I'd die happy.

Royal New Zealand Ballet are on a UK tour. See www.nzballet.org.nz

jenny.gilbert@independent.co.uk