Nutcracker is ballet’s annual sugar rush – a gulp of delicious dance and Tchaikovsky’s music. Hitting the literal sweet spot between trashy and smugly tasteful can prove tricky, but English National Ballet’s new production – fun, cohesive and astoundingly pretty – delivers Quality Street levels of moreish pleasure.
It’s a collaboration between Aaron S Watkin, ENB’s artistic director, and rising star choreographer Arielle Smith. Given their previous, you’d guess that she led on storytelling and he on the classical set pieces, but they create a harmonious whole.
We open in Edwardian London: tumbling chimney sweeps, suffragettes, a Fagin-like cheesemonger with a swarm of sticky-fingered urchins. It’s giving Mary Poppins, with a dollop of Oliver. Away from the streetlife, the bougie Stahlbaum family holds a Christmas party. Afterwards, little Clara creeps downstairs and dreams: of a battle with the mice, a flight through the snow with a prince to the land of sweet delight.
Productions of Nutcracker can struggle to locate a workable plot – ENB’s last version was barely coherent – but these magical characters reflect Clara’s waking world. Mama becomes the gracious Sugar Plum Fairy, auntie the Ice Queen, granny leads the liquorice allsorts. It makes perfect sense.
One of the show’s few misjudgements is nudging the toymaker Drosselmeyer from uncanny to positively creepy – Junor Souza gives him way too much feline vim. And you might wince at the privileged tots, arms loaded with gifts and cheeks stuffed with treats. It’s hardly a Nutcracker for our cost-of-living crisis.
