It is ironic that during a season in which she has announced her decision to quit the stage Agnes Oaks should find the role of a lifetime. As Manon, she gives the performance of her lifetime. English National Ballet acquired MacMillan's delicious tear-jerker last year in a commendable decision to show something fresh to its regional audience. The staging differs from the Royal Ballet production only in its design, which, unlike the Georgiadis original, is capable of presentation in a variety of theatres. Made for the Royal Danish Ballet, Mia Stensgaard's sets are suggestive rather than grand (and are brilliantly lit by Mikki Kunttu), the costuming much lighter for the women and too flimsily balletic for the merry band of whores (who look as if a client had asked for saucy sylphides). But the staging is good-looking, well done by the company and, as I saw it on Friday, boasts Oaks and Thomas Edur as the doomed lovers.

Oaks puts not a foot, not a feeling, not a curve of her torso nor an appealing glance, wrong. Here is the Manon who has beguiled generations of readers and opera-lovers, and - now - ballet-goers. She has the seemingly innocent, irresistible sensuality that you see with Marilyn Monroe on film; an impeccable timing of glance and gesture, a prettiness of step and the unabashed erotic charge that fires Manon's character. It is a luscious reading, and yet pathetic. (As with the greatest interpreters, you feel like shouting "Oh, please don't!" at Manon's most wilful moments.) A glorious portrait, and one matched by Edur's des Grieux. Edur has ever been an artist of elegant expression, noblest means. Here is a des Grieux whose tragedy is excused (as excused it must be) by his innate distinction of temperament. In despair, in anger, as in impassioned response to Manon, he is ever-stylish. And as a partnership, quiet marvels of common response are the armature of their interpretation.