MOST people would regard obsessive jealousy and anger as being the baser of man’s emotions, yet in certain circumstances they can be transformed into things of beauty. How is this done?

The answer lies in the dynamism of well executed dance. And there can be few better exponents of this than Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Tyrone Singleton, whose balletic and acting talents not so much flowed during this triple bill tribute to the Bard, rather became a raging torrent of unbridled angst.

We initially encounter Singleton in the first of these performances to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of Warwickshire’s great poet. Titled Wink, it takes its curious name from the first line of sonnet 43 “When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see.”

The piece echoes the meter of the poetic form so beloved of our man of Stratford, Jakub Ciupinski’s music’s conforming to the familiar three quatrains and couplet of two lines.

Even Mimi Lien’s sparse design of square panels seems to hint at the ordered construction of Shakespeare’s preferred mode of writing verse.

And indeed, this proves to be a busy night for Singleton, for he later plays Othello, a great man who is sent to his destruction by the inner demons that will also condemn his innocent wife, wrongly suspected of adultery.

The Moor’s Pavane is a stately fandango of doom, Henry Purcell’s music forming the perfect soundtrack as The Moor’s wife (Delia Mathews) and his friend’s wife (Elisha Willis) flit around his fading light like slowly wearying moths, oblivious to the mortal peril.

Meanwhile, Iain Mackay – billed as the Moor’s friend, but in reality the treacherous, scheming Iago – loads the gun that will ultimately blast their world to smithereens.

Finally, The Shakespeare Suite rightly tops the bill, and presents us with the kind of sheer spectacle that makes the most of choreographer David Bintley’s genius for originality and innovation.

Bintley is a lifelong jazz enthusiast and it so happens that the late Duke Ellington and his musical partner Billy Strayhorn were great fans of the Bard. Put all this together in some latter-day witches’ cauldron, add the magic ingredient of Colin Towns’ Mask Orchestra… and you have a marriage made in ballet heaven.

Towns’ band effortlessly captures the essence of Ellington’s music right from the outset, the harmony of the massed horns evoking images of the famed Cotton Club, speakeasies and slugs of Prohibition era hooch.

It is thanks to this meticulous attention to harmonic detail that we are presented with a superbly strident Lady Macbeth, courtesy of Celine Gittens, a winsome Juliet thanks to Jenna

Roberts, and a fabulous Richard III from Valentin Olovyannikov, complete with suit, shades and an attitude so sharp he’s in danger of cutting himself. Crookback Dick he sure ain’t.

And once again, it is Singleton’s terminally tortured Othello that dominates, his ever-blackening mood adding to the murk that Peter Teigen’s mood-laden lighting brings to the proceedings.

But as I’ve speculated in a previous review, it’s First Artist Brandon Lawrence who my money’s on. His precise technique and razor-sharp style must surely propel him higher up the company’s ranks in the very near future.

Oh yes, everything came together with these pieces… there was truly magic in the air at this veritable midsummer night’s dream of a triple bill. It runs at Birmingham Hippodrome until Saturday (June 25).