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The results are odd, and overall, not successful. The narrative, set mainly in 1930, concerns the meeting of two potential young lovers, Sophie, a girl gymnast in an unnamed western country (where everyone has German names) and Alexander, from a visiting Russian football team. (Shostakovich was famously fond of football). The action is framed by the first subsequent meeting of the older selves of the two protagonists which takes place in the present day.

Although a huge cast is deployed there is surprisingly little actual dancing taking place. Often there are large crowd scenes where most of the cast are motionless, with just two or three characters dancing. There is precious little choreography for the corps as such, and the effect is of a series of disconnected pas de deux taking place in front of a highly costumed pageant. The actual steps that Gelber asks of his dancers are for the most part not particularly taxing, given the stellar firepower of the company at his disposal. The characters are not strongly characterised in the dance itself - it’s as if Gelber doesn’t quite trust it to carry meaning. Wonderful stretches of danceable music pass by without action. The end of the ballet is a curious case in point. After a scene where the old Sophie and Alexander embrace at last, the curtain goes down, and then rises again on an empty stage with a huge portrait of the composer. The orchestra tear their way through a tremendous finale. But no dancing.

The production still retains the Soviet worldview and attitudes that were visible in the ballets from the 1960s presented in the triple bill earlier in the week. The Russian footballers are clean cut heroes, the westerners are cruel or drunk (the men), or decadent (most of the women), with the exception of a radiantly pure heroine of course.

Putting together a successful three act narrative is an undeniably difficult business, or there would be more of them. Many narrative works introduce us to the protagonists and set up their dilemma or situation in the fist act, moving on to a further crisis or development in the second with a resolution in the third. This is Gelber’s first attempt at such a major undertaking, and the result makes you wonder why the Mariinsky management entrusted the task to someone with so little experience. The narrative is repetitive with the second act largely recapitulating the first.

In the first act, Alexander and Sophie have met and are attracted, and dance at a party to the disgust of Sophie’s current boyfriend Heinrich (quite clearly the villain just as the character in evening dress in the Young Lady and the Hooligan was. Some things don’t seem to change).

In the second act, we have another party scene. Olga, a film star has taken a shine to Alexander’s friend Vladimir, and whisks them all off to a nightclub. But the relationship between Olga and Vladimir is not developed much. He is a generic hero’s friend and her role seems an excuse to wear a selection of fabulous gowns and make grand entrances rather than to be a flesh and blood creature.

These parties and clubs (again like that shown in the Young Lady and the Hooligan in the triple bill) seem to be rather pallid affairs. Maybe it wasn’t the thing for these corrupt westerners to be seen to be having too good a time. There is yet another irritatingly extended drunk scene for von Klein (Andrey Ivanov) which adds nothing to the storyline. We learn little more about Sophie and Alexander or the other characters that we didn’t know already

What was surprising in this act was the performance of a set piece for some acrobats at the show. This was very much the king of classical divertissement that the Mariinsky would normally sail through with aplomb, with its seemingly endless supply of well trained soloists. For this company, it was a surprise to see this looking rather strained with the partnering looking tangled and difficult.

It is only in the final moments of the second act that the production picks up some momentum, and it is this moment where Gelber finally gets a mass of dancers actually moving on the stage and trusting dance rather than gesture or video projection to get his point across. It begins with a depiction of a football match – not initially particularly convincing or persuasive. But the stage gradually floods with men, and the music turns more martial, the scoreboard starts to revolve as if with a count of the dead and we are clearly headed off to war. The third act shows us the consequences (separately) for both protagonists though the narrative isn’t always as clear as it might be.

Putting the 1930s narrative inside a flashback from the present day is one of Gelber's better ideas, particularly as it brings us the veterans Gabriella Komleva and Sergey Berezhnoy as he elderly lovers. She in particular was projected more liveliness and warmth than many of her much younger colleagues. Other good things are the four modern boys playing football in the opening scene – you can quite clearly see them bouncing the invisible ball and passing it to each other in a way that you can’t in the bigger football scenes later, and this is neatly achieved with a mix of classical ballet with just a few tentative street dance moves thrown in at the end. This bit of promise never really seemed fulfilled by the rest of the evening.

Among the cast Daria Pavlenko looks charming as Sophie, but there wasn’t really that much chemistry between her and Mikhail Lobukhin as Alexander (when compared to the older lovers), and not all the partnering seemed smooth. Ekaterina Kondaurova wears her costumes elegantly as Olga, but doesn’t really have enough to get her teeth into. Taken overall, though, the cast didn’t quite look to have their heart in it.

What does this production it tell us about the Mariinsky ? It has one of the great orchestras. It is capable of a modern staging, with projections and photos integrated, through the giant camera device becomes rather intrusive. The resources available are vast. A huge cast emerged for the curtain, a cast which seemed in some ways much too big for the actual work we had seen, too many bodies for the amount of choreography. It’s possible to imagine this fairly easily being given by a modest regional British company with a cast of 30 or so. But the Mariinsky needs something on a grander scale, with a creativity and inventiveness which measures up to the sweep of the score and the talent of its dancers.