The first notices are in for The Royal Ballet’s revival of Manon, which opened the company’s 2026/27 season at Covent Garden on 13 October. Kenneth MacMillan’s 1974 ballet, set to Massenet and drawn from Abbé Prévost’s novel, follows a young woman torn between love and money in 18th-century Paris, and this revival is staged by Laura Morera. Opening night brought back the long-standing partnership of Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé, and the dance critics are warm about both, with Joseph Sissens’s unusually menacing Lescaut a recurring talking point. Where they part company is in the pit: one critic credits Koen Kessels’s conducting with the evening’s emotional pull, while two others found his tempi too slow for the drama.
The verdict: five reviews in so far: two five-star notices, one at four and a half and one at four, plus the Financial Times, whose review sits behind a paywall. Among the four that score, the average is just over 4.6 out of 5. Every one of them puts Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé at the heart of the evening; the one real disagreement is over the tempi set by conductor Koen Kessels.
What are critics saying about Manon?
Bachtrack
"Your heart will break"
Reviewer: Deborah Weiss
Weiss describes an opening night that left people in tears all over the house, and she counts Kessels’s conducting among the reasons rather than against them.
"In Manon, they are sensational, partly because they are so inextricably intertwined with the music."
She was surprised by the malice in Joseph Sissens’s Lescaut and repelled, as intended, by Bennet Gartside’s Monsieur G.M. Her one reservation is the opening of Act 2, which drew little response from the audience, but she ranks the closing duet in the Louisiana swamp among the most devastating she has seen.
BroadwayWorld
"A lavish experience"
Reviewer: Matthew Paluch
Paluch thinks this staging lands harder than the last one two years ago, with the crowd scenes full of small stories that reach the back of the stalls.
"Hayward is innocence and seduction personified, Sambé young love and despair."
He admires Gartside’s predatory Monsieur GM and the brilliance of Sissens’s dancing, wonders aloud whether the thinner third act points to a two-act edit, and suggests that both leads still have details to refine, even while calling them at the top of their game.
London Unattached
"Manon, Kenneth MacMillan’s transporting ballet, opens at Covent Garden"
Reviewer: Teresa Guerreiro
Guerreiro finds an easy chemistry between the two leads and gives Hayward credit for a rounded heroine, though she would have liked a little more languor in the bedroom pas de deux.
"Marcelino Sambé’s magnificent performance, though, was for me the beating heart of the ballet."
She calls his dancing technically faultless and was moved to tears by the finale. Like Gray below, she found Kessels’s tempi unaccountably slow, enough to drain some of the intensity at times.
Gramilano
"As bitingly savage as ever"
Reviewer: Jonathan Gray
Gray, who has watched Hayward in the role for more than a decade, traces how far her Manon has deepened, and calls the pairing one of the company’s most treasured.
"Marcelino Sambé’s Des Grieux is honestly, gloriously danced – only the slow tempi in the pit hold back the passion."
He found Sissens vicious and dangerous as Lescaut and Anna Rose O’Sullivan buoyant as his Mistress, and wonders whether a ballet now playing in Paris and Prague as well risks becoming too familiar, before concluding that its portrait of a pitiless world still bites.
Production photographs from The Royal Ballet’s 2024 revival of Manon, by Foteini Christofilopoulou.
Also reviewed by: the Financial Times ("Manon review — fruity ode to debauched love touches hearts again"), whose review sits behind a paywall.
Manon caps a busy fortnight for The Royal Ballet: the critics’ verdict on its gala for The Royal Ballet School is in our roundup of A Centenary Celebration, and the company’s Robbins and MacMillan programme is previewed in everything you need to know about Visionaries.
Manon is booking at the Royal Opera House until 25 November 2026.
