Apparently Prokofiev's original score for Romeo and Juliet had a happy ending. No such optimism derails the final, tragic conclusion in this compelling new production, premiered by Scottish Ballet on Tuesday. Instead, choreographer Krzysztof Pastor reminds us that - just as in Shakespeare's Verona - today's youth can be the innocent victims of their parents' die-hard allegiance to a family clan, a religious creed or a political conviction.

The opening evening promenade sets the action in 1930s Italy - back-projected film-footage and astutely-styled costuming will subsequently re-locate the unfolding story in the 1950s (for Act Two) and the 1990s (for Act Three). All is fairly genial until the arrival of the black-shirted Capulets, led by a lithely athletic but clearly inflexible Jarkko Lehmus and a Tybalt (Tama Barry) strutting along with similarly bombastic, fascistic conceit. No wonder Romeo's friends - apolitical, like him, in pale linen suits - have to take the mickey. Paul Liburd's Mercutio, a dazzling cameo of feral energies in dandy tailoring, goes for the jugular of Tybalt's machismo with a mix of kick-ass challenge and flirty-camp come-ons.

And what of Romeo and Juliet ? Sophie Martin's sweetly grave girl would, absolutely, fall for a Romeo like Erik Cavallari's poetic pacifist, not least after the cattle-market of the ball where stern Lehmus has her show off her bravura pointe-work before potential husbands. With no nurse to turn to - one of Pastor's bold, streamlining cuts - Juliet looks to her mother. But with duty to husband and concern for Juliet, visibly warring beneath her bias-cut black satin, Limor Ziv has already been broken by the Capulet regime. The future hope that would have been Juliet's all-forgiving love for Romeo dies in a final moment of exquisitely choreographed, all-consuming grief.