Coppelia came to Worthing on Sunday afternoon and the 5.30pm curtain-up enabled many children to experience a performance and production as enjoyable as any Coppelia brought to this theatre in recent years.

While the ensemble and solo dancing in the outer two acts has to demonstrate the quality of the company's performers and costumes, the central act, the mysterious interior of Dr Coppelius' dollmaking workshop, challenges the company to convey and sustain the intrique with its acting and staging. Tchassov's now 13-year-old European Ballet achieved that. As the act progressed, the magic was retained and the humour developed.

The character part of the eccentric dollmaker was carried superbly by Angelo Ruggieri. An older artiste can maybe tend to maintain an elusive and world-weary quirkiness. Ruggieri did not flag in consistency and his freshness of youth lent a degree of open enthusiasm to his task of drumming sense into the befuddled Frantz in his confusion over the identity of the doll and his betrothed, Swanhilda.

He spends the whole act on the move and traversing a whole range of gestures and actions. In fact, all the company's principals conveyed mimed language with admirable clarity.

Act 2 was a splendid sequence, with Polina Petkova, as Swanhilda, revelling in her disguise and injecting genuine electricity in her sudden Spanish dance, prompted by Dr Coppelius by giving her the fan from his flamenco doll.

We were fortunate in catching Petkova and missing the veteran Oleg Kozhanov who, reportedly, wearily retired from the tour and production a fortnight ago to return to Moscow, and resume teaching and coaching.

The much-travelled Petkova, a Bulgarian and most suited in the East European flavoured national dances in Act 1, combined technical accomplishment with verve, especially in the finale , with its two separate circuits of fouettes, as well as an appropriate degree of fire in her indignation at Frantz's naivety. However, she shortly will leave the European Ballet for a French appointment.

Kozhanov's replacement as Frantz, Pier Paolo Gobbo, a young Italian from Bologna, improved as the performance progressed and he eventually took up the athletic and footwork challenge set him in the first act by his two friends, the blond Frenchman Vincent Cabot and the third male Italian on show, Stefano Muia. By the pas de deux, Gobbo was strong and attacking but composed.

Muia added startling excellent elevation to the middle act proceedings as the Chinese Doll accidentally brought into compulsive action by Swanhilda's stray foot.

Swanhilda's friends, Laura Boltri (Italian) and Ania Thormeyer (Russian) later extended their grace to prayerful solos in the wedding final act and the four other girls gave a joyous sickle harvest quartet, then produced some pleasing ensembles with the couple's two pairs of friends.

And the children from Glendale Theatre Arts School in Tarring inevitably charmed with their country dance. They were involved with European Ballet's previous visit here, with Nutcracker.

The reds, browns and white rural costumes of the town square opening act transformed to pale green, gold and white for the latter celebrations in the grounds of the manor house. And the vivacious and vivid Delibes score revealed itself to many an audience member, seeing their first Coppelia, who knew the tunes but not their true home.