The Soldier's Tale, Linbury Studio Theatre, London

Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale is tricky because it slithers between genres. We've come for the bright sour music, and find we have Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz's narration to contend with. Will Tuckett's fizzing new production works because it moves so easily from one kind of theatre to another. Dancers slide from speech to movement, with the music cutting through it all.

Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale is tricky because it slithers between genres. We've come for the bright sour music, and find we have Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz's narration to contend with. Will Tuckett's fizzing new production works because it moves so easily from one kind of theatre to another. Dancers slide from speech to movement, with the music cutting through it all.

Action and narration are consciously theatrical. The Linbury Studio Theatre is clean, square and utilitarian. Lez Brotherston's marvellous set turns it into a plush Victorian playhouse, now sadly seedy.

The dancers are heavily grease-painted: rouged cheeks, white faces, eyeliner to suit an ancient Egyptian. Tuckett has returned to his Wind in the Willows team, and they're all strong stage presences. Will Kemp is the narrator. Adam Cooper is the Soldier, selling his soul to Matthew Hart's Devil. The Royal Ballet's Zenaida Yanowsky dances the soldier's abandoned girlfriend, doubling as the king's daughter.

Tuckett's storytelling is fast and tightly paced. His dancers are characterised by short solos, but quickly shift into mime. They jump off the inner stage, then get drawn back to it. The choreography is weaker in the longer dances. When Tuckett tries a wistful dance for the Soldier and his girl, he meanders. Cooper and Yanowsky droop lyrically, but they're both more vivid in the throwaway gestures that illustrate the plot.

This narrator steals some of the devil's thunder, wheedling the Soldier into temptation. He changes pace quickly and lightly, and finds innuendoes you didn't see coming. He also has the job of bridging the gap between dance and narration. When speaking, he focuses his physical attention on his subject, his stance shifting with each new mood. He's dancing all the time.

Terrible things happen to the Soldier hero, and the story keeps an ironic, unsympathetic distance. Adam Cooper suggests sincere shock and pain, without ever breaking the mood. You care what happens to him, but you don't take his disasters as tragedy. The dancing is big and clear, with just the right amount of swagger.

The Devil's physical extravagance is his best quality. He scampers down the stairs like a spider, arms and legs pumping through a kind of boneless scuttle. When the Soldier tries to kill him, he heaves and twitches. Hart's speeches are the production's campest moments. This time you can see the jokes coming, and he loses danger as well as surprise.

Yanowsky is mournfully pretty as the girlfriend. As the king's daughter, she's a painted airhead, waving regally before catching herself in the wrong part of the stage. This Soldier's Tale bounces from one idea to another, helped by Richard Bernas's spiky conducting. The whole production rattles along, fast and cheerful and clever.