Kenneth MacMillan triple bill, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, review The curtain rises on a young couple engaged in a clearly illicit clinch. But she breaks away, and is soon forlornly lined up with her four sisters in the house that's run, with a rod of iron, by their mother. Before long, the matriarch is descending the stairs like a nightmarish jailer, the only sound the sepulchral thud of her stick as it strikes each step. So begins Las Hermanas, Kenneth MacMillan's 1963 response to Federico García Lorca's play The House of Bernarda Alba. Like the other two pieces in this programme commemorating the 20th anniversary of the genius choreographer's death, it was in fact created not for the Royal Ballet, but in Germany. And, contrary to a claim in Saturday night's cast list, this was the first time the Royal Ballet had performed it at Covent Garden. In MacMillan's hands, Lorca's pressure-cooker of repressed desire becomes a 26-minute cousin - both lurid and pitch-black - of Frederick Ashton's later, far gentler rooster-in-the-hen-house ballet A Month in the Country. Nicholas Georgiadis's atmospheric set forces the action claustrophobically to the fore, while Frank Martin's harpsichord-concerto score adds an extra gothic flourish to this domestic horror story. MacMillan himself has a field day with the steps, as does the astutely chosen cast. As the eldest sister, Zenaida Yanowsky is a mesmerising, hand-wringing ball of nerves and pent-up craving. She is desperate to yield to her suitor - the very same fellow who is with her youngest sibling at the start - yet her hands are so petrified with fear that she cannot even grasp him. By vivid contrast, the duet between the lusty fellow (Thiago Soares, relishing every moment) and the headstrong youngster is a fireball of MacMillanesque passion, with Melissa Hamilton lustily wrapping her legs around him even when she has her back to him. Laura Morera is also jaggedly brilliant as the jealous sister who ruins everything. Some may find Las Hermanas overheated, and perhaps too concise. I was utterly and guiltily gripped. Earlier comes 1966"s Concerto, a masterpiece of abstraction danced especially well by Steven McRae, Yuhui Choe and Sarah Lamb, with the corps strong but some poorly aligned work from the mid-sized ensembles. Finally, there's Requiem, MacMillan's 1976 farewell to his great contemporary John Cranko, who died three years earlier. The company does this transcendent work proud, unfazed by its profound challenges, if presumably as awestruck as anyone that all three works on this bill came from the mind of just one person. Until Dec 5.