LONDON — A bright red curtain flutters down. Prokofiev’s ominous chords thunder. The blood-drenched lovers lie entwined on a tombstone. Matthew Bourne shows us the end of the story at the beginning of his powerful, dark “Romeo and Juliet,” which opened at Sadler’s Wells here on Friday. And it’s not a pretty sight.

This “Romeo and Juliet” — the latest in Mr. Bourne’s genre-bridging adaptations of classics like “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Car Man” and “The Red Shoes” — doesn’t offer the consolations of sumptuous Renaissance period costuming and décor, the ribald whores and riotous crowds so familiar to dance audiences from ballet versions of the Shakespeare tragedy. Instead, he sets the story in the white-tiled, stark environs of the Verona Institute, populated by teenagers who are strictly policed by guards and medics.

Mr. Bourne brilliantly evokes a world in which the young inmates are patrolled and controlled through medication and punishment, their rigidly synchronized movement underlining their lack of freedom. Lez Brotherston’s simple set emphasizes their incarceration further: a white semicircle with three doors, framed by staircases and a balcony, all enclosed by white fencing.

Juliet (Cordelia Braithwaite) is red-haired and intense, preyed upon and eventually raped by the brutal guard Tybalt (Dan Wright, scarily large and tattooed). Romeo (Paris Fitzpatrick, touchingly fragile) is the twitchy, troubled son of Senator and Mrs. Montague, who are extremely keen to wash their hands of their embarrassing child.