Mark Morris Dance Group/Royal Ballet of Flanders/Rambert Dance co. - the Sunday Times review

David Dougill is elevated by William Forsythe's Middle, but badly let down by Mark Morris's Romeo with a happy ending

Picture the scene. We are in Juliet's bedroom on the morning of her official wedding, and she, having swallowed Friar Laurence's potion (a distillation of Curaçao, to judge by its hue), is propped up against her pillows looking quietly but desperately ill. Enter her parents and nurse with her intended husband, Paris, who strums his mandolin like George Formby, then capers with an entertainment troupe of shimmying, whirling women and leaping men who unroll carpets and lay out jewels and liquors as in a bazaar. Not one of this concert party of 13 has cast a glance in Juliet's direction (though two of them are sitting on the bed). Only we, the audience, notice that she has gradually slumped down onto her face, and we may long to shout out: "She's behind you!"

We are intended to take this Monty Pythonesque episode seriously, however, along with others that test our suspension of disbelief, in Romeo and Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare, which the Mark Morris Dance Group, from New York, brought to the Barbican for its British premiere. This misguided production was sparked by the American musicologist Simon Morrison's discovery in Russian archives of Prokofiev's original 1935 version of the score, and its scenario by the composer and the dramatist Sergey Radlov, which flouted Shakespeare in having the lovers live happily ever after. It was banned by Stalin, who, though one hesitates to credit him, in this case showed taste.

In staging this version for the first time, Morris — usually such a joyful charmer in his works — proved the wrong man for the job. A three-act Romeo is a big task, and Morris fails to find a security of pitch or resonance. His Verona is a children's playground, it seems, as characters squabble unconvincingly and vie with each other in a plethora of obscene gesturing, when not gallivanting or pretty palm-patting. Allen Moyer's permanent decor of stripped-pine walls has no atmosphere; the marketplace is evoked by model houses; the fighting (of poor standard) is with wooden swords; the all-sorts costumes by Martin Pakledinaz could have come from an amateur theatrical property box — the acting, too.

Escalus, Prince of Verona (Joe Bowie, looking like Willard White as Othello), indulges in absurd processions, led by a pennant-bearer who leaps down onto the stage from the wings. Because there aren't many leading female roles in R&J, Morris casts women as Mercutio and Tybalt: Amber Darragh and Julie Worden, who are vigorous, in a thigh-slapping, principal-boy sort of way. Morris keeps his cast busy — even characters who are usually mime parts are dancing, including Friar Laurence (John Heginbotham, house- proud in his chic cell) — but you feel he is hard pressed to fill the music. His formal dances for the ballroom are unimpressive (and curious, with a hint of disco).

Lauren Grant's Nurse, bustly, skippy and earthy (she finds a nit in Juliet's hair), is one of the more successful characters.

The loving couple themselves lack oomph. In the cast I saw, Maile Okamura and Noah Vinson danced appealingly, and looked charming in a nude bed scene, but felt constrained by an almost perverse reserve in Morris's choreography. Apart from the lifts (Juliet often lifting Romeo), Morris seems to keep everything in the pas de deux low and understated. Romeo's little leg-lift motif, intended to express ecstasy, just looks mimsy. So does the apotheosis duet in a place called Elsewhere, against star-spangled nursery wallpaper. And this "original" ending is not, disappointingly, to unfamiliar music: merely reprises of previous themes. The LSO, under Stefan Asbury, played Prokofiev attractively, but, all told, this felt like a journey that wasn't really necessary.

Sadler's Wells is curating a Focus on Forsythe experience, which in the spring will include William Forsythe's company and a number of dance installation works (one involving hundreds of pendulums at Tate Modern). At the Wells, the Royal Ballet of Flanders gave his 1988 work Impressing the Czar, the first London showing in full (though it was in Edinburgh in 2007). This surreal extravaganza, unfailingly fascinating or unfathomably infuriating, according to taste, is a recherché satire on western cultural history, no less.

Characters include St Sebastian, the Brothers Grimm and a trio named Agnes, Rodger Wilcot and Mr Pnut, whose significance must be clear only to Forsythe. Segments of sharp, polished dance intersperse madcap mime and arcane activity. The middle section, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, is a widely known showpiece of Forsythe's twisted-classical style, which the company dance thrillingly. After an insufferable scene about an auction, we conclude with the irresistible finale of 40 dancers (both sexes), all dressed as schoolgirls, charging and skipping in circles, a ferociously zestful battalion. No other choreographer could conceive of — and bring off — anything quite like this.

Also at the Wells, Rambert Dance Company gave the London premiere of Mark Baldwin's Eternal Light. Howard Goodall's "requiem for the living" is sanctimoniously swoony, but excellently rendered by the orchestra and two choirs. The dancers have a grand sweep to them, and the solos and duets are clever and affecting, but the samey ensembles make the piece feel too long. The designs are overextravagant, but the dancers magnificent, as always.