We are immediately transported to Renaissance Verona in Rudolf Nureyev’s award winning production, originally created in 1977 to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

Using sumptuous costumes and sets the English National Ballet take you to Verona, with its market traders, street entertainers and the the feuding of the Capulet and Montague families, leading to a brawl between the two rival factions and later on the fight scene. The scenes in the market were surprisingly bawdy, with lots of humour and a bit of slapstick and rather a lot of derrière wiggling from Mercutio.

The choreography looks very complicated, (although a couple of times I thought it was a bit overly-fussy) but the dancers made it look simple. Aaron Robison was a delightful Romeo and Jurgita Dronina was stunning as Juliet. The two pas de deux were beautiful - the one in the balcony scene had lasted for seven minutes, had 22 lifts, 24 arabesques, 8 coupes jetes and 5 kisses! Other dancers who stood out for me were the playful Benvolio (James Forbat), Mercutio (Pedro Lapetra) and Juliet’s cousin Tybalt (Fabian Reimair).

My favourite scene was the Capulet’s ball, which Romeo gatecrashes and the star-crossed lovers meet, where they all perform the dramatic Dance of the Knights, to the famous pieces of music, probably better known to most people as the theme tune to the BBC’s The Apprentice. We were sat about 10 feet away from the orchestra, the superb English National Ballet Philharmonic, directed by Gavin Sutherland, and this particular piece of music brought me out in goosebumps.

This production is very much male dominated. At times it appeared that Juliet had been sidelined, for instance when she agonised over whether to kill herself with Tybalt’s sword or take the sleeping potion, she saw apparitions of Tybalt and Mercutio, and they took over, leaving her in the background.

Having said that, I loved this production from the first note to the last steps. It was nearly three hours long, with two intervals, but certainly didn’t feel like it.

It runs until Saturday.