Hansel and Gretel, Royal Ballet, Linbury Studio Theatre, Covent Garden, review Straitened times, a broken home, domestic violence, child abduction, murder - small wonder that Liam Scarlett figured Hansel and Gretel to be a tale for today. In telling the famous 1812 Grimm fairy tale in dance, the Royal Ballet's 26-year-old artist in residence has left no grim stone unturned, stripping off any trace of the sugar-coating that Engelbert Humperdinck applied in his 1893 opera, and setting the action in an unforgiving corner of McCarthy-era America. Playing out in two halves of 60 and 40 minutes, in a bisected (and suitably dungeon-like) Linbury Studio, this dark-as-night traverse production grips for much of its first act. Sure, two pivotal struggles are twice as long as they need to be. And James Hay, as Hansel, struggles to overcome the almost inevitable tweeness of being a grown man feigning childishness. But that opening hour has much going for it. The characters are articulately etched in essentially classical dance, with Gretel, in the first 15 minutes alone, engaging in no fewer than three poignant duets: with her father, her brother and a portrait of her mother. Leanne Cope proves an affectingly pretty, graceful and touching Gretel, Laura Morera a weapons-grade bitch as her stepmother, and Steven McRae downright uncanny as the sandman - at once eel-like and marionettish - who leads them to the fateful cabin. More sinister still, however, is the witch. "She" is now a blond, bespectacled, V-neck-wearing and very male psychopath who - in Brian Maloney's unflinching interpretation - looks disconcertingly like a cross between Elijah Wood in the movie Sin City and Made in Chelsea's Oliver Proudlock. Thanks to sets (by Jon Bausor) and lighting (Paul Keogan) that ingeniously embrace both the Linbury's layout and the story's horror, he makes a stupendously scary first appearance - think The Silence of the Lambs meets the darker side of David Lynch. Given that Dan Jones's symphonically Herrmann-esque score does a decent job, too, why, then, not give this Hansel and Gretel higher marks? Because, besides the excessive length of the first half, the piece entirely loses its way in the second. In trying too hard to flesh out the characters of the sandman and the witch and intensify the darkness, Scarlett lets the piece spiral into incoherence, tawdriness and tedium. The momentum vanishes, the homoeroticism is spread on tiresomely thick, and, startling though he is, even McRae overstays his welcome. Scarlett is largely to blame - though not entirely. He is a choreographer of rare talent and ambition, but this is not the first time he has come unstuck when trying to meet the demands of narrative. As with 2012"s Sweet Violets, his Hansel and Gretel suggests a lack of smart guidance from the RB, someone to insist he prune, edit, clarify, simplify and streamline as much as possible. Plenty though this piece's warped pleasures are, you'll leave wanting - in every respect - far less. Until Saturday, May 11. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk