DANCE: Cigarettes can improve your step

Carmen

Congress Theatre, Eastbourne

On the Road to Baghdad

Sadler's Wells, London

What makes the story of so compel- ling, 150 years on? The combination of sex, sleaze and cigarettes must have something to do with it. Northern Ballet Theatre's new touring production homes in on the latter in a big way. A giant advertising poster of a glamorous smoker with the legend "Que sabormaravilhoso!" dominates Lez Brotherston's set, and the gaggle of female workers emerging for their factory coffee break have puffed through a packet and a half before Bizet's Habanera kicks in.

I didn't see the point of shifting the action from Spain to South America. The sense of seediness, sweaty heat and incipient self-destruction so palpable in this piece yells "Spain" at you like a marmalade orange. And as for corruptible cops like Jose, you don't need to go to Rio to find them. This geographic detail apart, NBT doesn't put a foot wrong. The late Christopher Gable revamped the plot - including the brilliant wheeze of making Escamillo a rock star and setting 's death in a bar with his latest gig blaring from the bar TV - but tragically, did not live to see it on the stage. Yet every scene bears the imprint of his passionate commitment to drama, and the cast every inch the consummate actor-dancers he trained them to be. He also made a shrewd, if surprising, choice of choreographer in Didy Veldman, the Dutch-born dancer whose floor-bound, barefoot style has up till now found its niche in enigmatic, small-scale pieces for modern companies such as Rambert. It was a gamble to set her loose on a big ballet company, but it's one that has paid dividends all round.

The narrative is lean and clean, and keeps up a cracking tempo, even through the set pieces: a truncheon-flexing chorus of mean policemen; a yawning, slouchy routine for the factory girls. And with Patricia Doyle's astute directorial help, Veldman avoids any need for mime by weaving clear emotional intent into the protagonists' every move. Charlotte Broom is more than credible as the tight-denimed, gum chewing hussy, making her presence felt in lunging, devil-may-care falls and swivels around her men. As Jose's fiancee, Fiona Wallis is all clinging sweetness and coy little steps (no wonder Jose goes to the bad) and Christopher Giles's smirking rock icon Escamillo gives a thrilling burst of breakdance to establish his macho appeal.

The score, crackingly well played by NBT's orchestra under John Pryce- Jones, is slimmed-down Bizet, with the vocals cunningly replaced by instrumental solos: cello for Jose's aria, slinky trumpet for , and all-out synthesised rock for the toreador's song, the single brilliant idea that draws all the threads of this production together.

There are flaws, but very minor ones. 's fleeting suicide bid seems to come from another story; the gangsters' mobile phone routine flogs a dead horse; and and Jose's athletic bed scene hardly sets the sheets on fire. But who cares, in an evening as full-bloodedly enjoyable as this?

Brevity and clarity are less in evidence in Green Candle's offering at Sadler's Wells, a "community" event involving a core of professional actor- dancers and a vast mob of enthusiastic amateurs ranging in age from five to 75. If you accept that the point of this kind of project is more the journey than the arrival, it becomes churlish to criticise. Yet curiously I found more to admire in the chorus dances than elsewhere: a yarooing throng of wild-limbed Amazonian women; an elegant re-enactment of an eighth- century Turkish wedding; a Baghdad marketplace, bristling with life. All this was thoughtfully, even inspiringly done, and clearly every performer had a whale of a time.

No, the chief fault of On the Road to Baghdad, an adaptation of Guneli Gun's novel, which in turn recycles ancient Turkish and Persian tales, is that the editor mislaid his cutting knife. Three hours is too much of anyone's time to spend in a darkened room. And the convoluted tale of how Huru found enlightenment after grappling with murderous family members, jinnees, bandits, dervishes, a same-sex marriage, time-travel and losing and finding a baby son, just makes you want to scuttle for the exit before time is up.

Yet there are some lovely things. Sally Davies's score - performed in costume from within a tasselled tent - draws attractively on the modes and timbres of ancient Persia; there is strong solo singing from Jason Lahav as the emblematic Green Man (though when he reappeared as other characters of greenish hue I was thoroughly confused); there is a terrific choreographed fight, and vertical dancing using flying wires. All this is viewed in the round - or, strictly, square - which is a first for the new Sadler's Wells, and I'm sorry to have to report that, acoustically at least, the theatre doesn't adapt too well to this arrangement. Every time a speaker turned away I lost the text. The Wells should stick to pure dance. And perhaps install some kind of timer device that automatically clears the stage with a giant broom when the audience has had enough.

`'is touring (0113 274 5355 for details). 'On the Road to Baghdad': Sadler's Wells, EC1 (0171 863 8000), 2.30pm today.