Manon, Coliseum, London

Agnes Oaks has waited a long time to dance Manon, one of the most desirable roles in British ballet. Shallow, fickle, amoral, corrupt, a young beauty whose greed leads to a spectacular downfall involving sleaze, diamonds, Parisian gambling scams and, finally, death as a deported convict in a Louisiana swamp, she is the ultimate romantic anti-heroine. We are not required to like the Abbé Prevost's 18th-century minx, but we do need to fall under her spell.

The challenge comes just in time for the 38-year-old Estonian, who retires at the end of March. And a sense of urgency, a sense of three decades' athletic and dramatic craft honed as if just for this moment, gives a glittering edge to Oaks' reading. When she first steps from the carriage that was supposed to convey her to a convent, only to hook up with her venal brother Lescaut (the excellent Dmitri Gruzdyev), who wastes no time in selling her to the highest bidder, Oaks slyly leaves us wondering how innocent she ever was. Does she or doesn't she clock what's going on as she's fingered by a series of rich old men? Oaks' eyes and body language, by turns dazzled and coquettish, are a tease.

And to what extent does she truly love Des Grieux, the ardent student she elopes with, then abandons for a fur coat? Oaks has no trouble whipping up carnal passion. Her first duet with Thomas Edur's Des Grieux is a nought-to-sixty acceleration of desire, from startled delight to total abandon. It's no accident that Edur is Oaks' offstage partner, too. It's that security that allows the life-threatening speed and pliancy she trusts to his hands.

As a soloist, though, Edur looks uncomfortable, especially in the spare, melting arabesques with which Des Grieux declares his smitten-ness, then later his pain. Edur is a fine classicist, but MacMillan's choreography throws googlies at a body trained for symmetry. The conclusion may be that Edur has waited for this chance too long.

Given that this work, made in 1974 with British taxpayers' money, has become box-office gold for 14 major foreign ballet companies, it's about time English National Ballet had a sniff at it. Unlike the Royal, ENB tours, taking classical dance to less ballet-affluent parts of Britain. So it's all to the good that Manon has come into its clutches – not in the original lavish production, but using portable designs made for Royal Danish Ballet.

Mia Stensgaard gives a much airier feel to the sleazy locations of the novel. The brothel is a single crystal chandelier; the swamp makes do with a layer of stage fog. It certainly makes plenty of space for dancing. But it also throws the onus on to the cast to summon the sense of place and actuality. Some scenes stagger under a weight of corny stage direction (did call girls really exist in a permanent state of hand-on-hip high dudgeon?). But the cheating-at-cards scam receives tight focus, and the brawls and swordfights up the ante. So, too, does ENB's house orchestra under Timothy Carey.

Coliseum (0871 911 0200) until 11 Jan. Touring to Oxford and Cardiff in April