Mayerling, Royal Opera House, London

Faded tribute to the choreography of Kenneth MacMillan

Ten years to the day since Kenneth MacMillan suddenly died during a revival of his Mayerling, the Royal Ballet has mounted it again (do you find that a little ghoulish?). This opens a season-long commemoration of the former principal choreographer, which will include three of his long, and four shorter, works.

Dancers love his ballets because they get to emote like crazy and dance impassioned, mostly erotic duets. Performing the big roles, they dodge the downside of three-act ballets, which contain much padding and give the corps de ballet extremely trivial dances (something MacMillan shared with his Russian contemporary, Yuri Grigorovich). In Mayerling, the ensembles in the long brothel scene are really rather ludicrous, as much as the posturing in the imperial court is stiff.

The story, if you must know, is that of Rudolf, Crown Prince of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, and how he and his teenage mistress, Mary Vetsera, were found dead in the hunting lodge at Mayerling. There were so many versions of what actually happened, and so much covering up of the facts, that the version adopted by MacMillan and his librettist, Gillian Freeman, can be accepted even though they have twisted the history – giving the Emperor's mother a walk-on role, for instance, when she was already dead.

I'm not sure that they needed to depict quite so many different possible causes for Rudolf's suicide: I counted seven, and that's without his syphilis, mentioned in the programme notes. Complex as his life and nature were, this becomes protracted, and simplification might have been preferable. A shorter, tighter ballet could have been much stronger, concentrating on the vital characters and lasting perhaps one hour (a length that often suited MacMillan well). We could have been spared the tiresomely implausible whores; the Hungarian dissidents need not have emerged so laughably often from the wall-hangings to importune Rudolf. And was it really a good idea to restore the (once sensibly omitted) sentimental song for Franz Josef's birthday?

Much depends on the performers, and each of the three leading parts will have three interpreters. We can hope the cast as a whole will grow into their roles; on the opening night, most of them were a bit subdued and not very lifelike. To be blunt, nobody fully matched the vivid memories left by the original cast, and some were too far behind for comfort. Fortunately, it was Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru as the two doomed lovers who came pretty close, once they got together. They're good, interesting dancers anyway, and they were helped by the original couple, David Wall and Lynn Seymour, at rehearsals – thanks to the new director, Monica Mason.

The hotchpotch score, which was assembled by John Lanchbery from pieces by Liszt, is not really the best work from either the composer or the arranger, but Barry Wordsworth, as guest conductor, made it sound good. And even if Nicholas Georgiadis's scenery is little more than serviceable, his costumes are historically plausible and excellent, moving well.

To 16 Nov (020-7304 4000)