English National Ballet’s new Nutcracker

London Coliseum
December 12, 2024

English National Ballet has performed a Nutcracker every year since its formation (as London Festival Ballet) in 1950. This much needed new production looks a treat although the ensemble dances are choreographically somewhat unimaginative. Artistic director Aaron S. Watkin’s neoclassical approach and Arielle Smith’s quirkier, more contemporary take on things do sit very happily side-by-side, though. Paul Pyant’s video design is very good whenever it is used, Dick Bird’s sets are glorious, and to say that Act Two is a riot of colour just doesn’t feel enough.

The ballet opens with what seems to be the increasingly common prologue in Drosselmeyer’s workshop above his Emporium of Sweets and Delights. His two assistants who pop up comically from below the workbench are remarkably reminiscent of muppets, and just as amusing.

I don’t recall Drosselmeyer ever having been given a first name. Here, we do later discover that his initials are C.Z. Maybe one day we’ll find out what they stand for. Besides his shop in London, we also learn he has emporia in St Petersburg and Nuremburg. The connection with one city is clear, the other less so.

More obviously than many productions, the story very neatly links the real world of Act One with the Land of Sweets and Delights of Act Two. The festive street market of Edwardian London that Clara Stahlbaum and her mother find themselves in is full of people selling delicacies from around the world, all replicated later, for example. Clara’s parents become the Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier.

That street scene also features two dancing chimney sweeps and a couple of Suffragettes. It screams Mary Poppins, in the choreography too, although at least the sweeps don’t burst into Dick van Dyke-style Cockney song. Even if I did in my head! Elsewhere, there’s a group of very Dickensian looking urchins straight out of Oliver! who very clearly will later become rats. It’s a shame more isn’t made of the supposedly sinister (he’s not!) figure of cheesemonger Uromys Grimsewer, who turns into King Rat.

Someone had some fun devising names here! Uromys is a genus of rat from Northern Australia and Melanesia, while the Grimsewer is a glass sword in the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The party at the Stahlbaum’s party has some quirkiness and humour in what dancing there is but is relatively unexciting. Junor Souza’s very genial Drosselmeyer has none of the darkness of some. He’s not short of a bit of magic, though, as when he repairs the broken nutcracker doll. Important moments get lost, though, like that the sugar plum he gives Clara has a magic ingredient that allows only her to see the Nutcracker Doll come to life.

In all this, the very natural and unaffected 11-year-old Delilah Wiggins as the child Clara was an absolute joy. Her face, actions, everything spoke volumes, and her solo, when she mimics Rhys Antoni Yeomans’ Nutcracker Doll, had a particular childish innocent beauty about it.

The lead up the battle is very effectively done with projections of rats scurrying down banisters and along shelves. The ghostly phosphorescence that tumbles down the staircase suggests magic is in the air. It’s not wrong!

The battle that follows takes forever to get going and disappoints when it finally does. Quite why it includes the appearance of gingerbread men, the reappearance of the Suffragettes and what I think was the Knight in Armour and his Fair Maiden (they do look more like robots from a 1960s children’s sci-fi series), is unclear. The climax is a surprise, though, Clara, now more grown up in the shape of Ivana Bueno, having no qualms about running the Rat King through with a sword. The Grimsewer, perhaps?

Bird’s ice-sculptured seahorse that takes Clara and her Nutcracker Prince, Francesco Gabriele Frola, to The Ice Realm is a picture, and the landscape that follows with its gnarly remains of a tree against a starry sky, a Christmas bauble for the moon, is a stunner. Anna Nevzorova was a majestic Ice Queen, for once given a name, Isolde. The choreography for the ensemble of Snowflakes has some nice patterns but often achieved through running around rather than dancing. The ice sea-horse pulled sleigh that takes everyone to Act Two is a picture.

Act Two, hosted by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, Emma Hawes and Aitor Arrieta, has the usual divertissements re-envisioned as sweet-themed dances. Quite why it is OK for the opening Turrón (Spanish nougat) to retain a clear sense of the usual national dance and costume but not so much the others is unclear. And sometimes (presumably deliberately) the link is extremely distant, as in the Chinese Dance, sometimes known as Tea, now Tanghulu (a candied fresh fruit on a skewer, widely seen in East Asia). The red jumpsuit costumes are a sort of odd Teletubbies meets firefighters affair, the choreography itself not even retaining a thread of connection.

Finally, and with a very obvious nod to a well-known brand, come a bunch of beaming tiny children dressed as Liquorice Allsorts. It’s cute if nothing else.

The conflating of the usual ensemble Waltz of the Flowers with a pas de deux for Clara and her Prince works rather well. The sparkling Bueno, full of joy and lightness, and Frola, finally getting to show just how good they are. It was the dance highlight of the evening, the pair set off nicely by the corps ladies and their buttercream headwear.

After that, the traditional Grand pas de deux feels rather understated, even though Emma Hawes sparkled as Sugar Plum. Unfortunately, her Cavalier had something of an off night. An uncertain start by Aitor Arrieta was followed by more rocky moments later.

And so back home, and just like in Ballet Theatre UK’s version seen a few days previous, Clara wakes to find she has the necklace given to her by the Sugar Plum Fairy. Maybe not a dream after all.

English National Ballet’s new Nutcracker is certainly fresh and it is different while still keeping enough tradition to make it comfortably familiar. Whether it will stand the test of time, we will see.

It is, like most Nutcrackers of course, really about Clara, and first Wiggins and then Bueno steal the show. Both came with natural smiles and were totally believable. They were a real lift on a cold, damp, grey, London December evening.