Kings International Ballet: The Nutcracker

Macready Theatre, Rugby
December 7, 2025

The Nutcracker comes in all shapes and sizes. There are Nutcrackers with a darker edge, and those all sugary sweetness. There are radical, revisionist retellings such as Mark Morris’ 1970s camp The Hard Nut, Matthew Bourne’s very witty Nutcracker! set in an orphanage, the urban Hip Hop Nutcracker, and the Harlem-set, African-American-focused The Chocolate Nutcracker. They can be set in any time and in any place. The possible variations are endless. And, most of the time, you can’t beat a traditional staging, with the traditional story, and Tchaikovsky’s unadulterated glorious score.

It is true that productions by smaller companies can feel a little underpopulated. Production and dancing standards can also disappoint. This is especially true of some of the ensembles doing long tours of one-night stands. But that’s far from the case with Kings International Ballet’s Nutcracker, which turned out to be a rather enjoyable, neatly choreographed, well-danced show.

The company is associated with the Kings International Ballet Academy, founded in 2018 by Tania Matos and Cheryl Thrush. Based in Barwell, Leicestershire, it offers a three-year vocational pathway where the focus is very much on classical ballet, alongside other children’s, postgraduate and teachers’ courses. For its Nutcracker, produced in association with Rugby School’s Macready Theatre, additional freelance dancers are brought in.

The ballet gets off to a fine start with an animated party scene that brims with life, helped by a great deal of dancing, not only from the hosts and guests, but also Drosselmeyer (Martin Dutton), who generally goes in for a lot of cape swirling, and the four maids. Matos and Thrush’s choreography is largely classical but there’s a lovely moment when everything takes on a very English Country Dance feel. Among Drosselmeyer’s creations are three life-size dolls, Arabic, Flower and Soldier, neatly presaging things to come.

Ex-Elmhurst student Georgia Smart, who has since performed with Cork City Ballet, Vienna Festival Ballet and Prague Festival Ballet, made for a lovely Clara. She convinced as someone mid-teens, conveying a lovely childlike delight at all the goings on, smiling broadly throughout. Her dancing was excellent too with her pas de deux with the Nutcracker (Rin Ishikawa, Ballet du Capitole Toulouse, McNicol Ballet Collective, New English Ballet Theatre) following the battle one of the evening’s highlights.

In the Kings production, Clara’s younger brother, Fritz, is played by a girl. The smartly dressed Rosa Mason, 12-years old and a student at Studio 84 Arts Academy, delivered a perfectly-pitched, tomboyish character, although whether that’s how one is supposed to see her, I’m not sure. Whatever, whether deliberately cast that way or out of necessity, it works rather well. Clara also gets an older sister, Freida, danced by Ellen Lawson, a Year-10 student at Hammond in Chester.

Striking at the party was how comfortable everyone looked acting; and that includes the children from local dance schools brought in for the show. All had clearly been very well coached.

Having returned to the parlour after everyone has gone home or gone to bed, this Clara falls asleep under the tree, after which a rat steals the Nutcracker doll given her by Drosselmeyer.

The battle is busy with the opposing soldiers and rats crossing in formations before taking things up with their swords. The set-to between the Nutcracker and King Rat also includes a lot of martial arts-style kicks, before Clara ends it all by bashing King Rat over the head with an empty spirit bottle.

‘Snowflakes,’ led by Ana Freire and Eloise Campion, is a dance with nice patterns, the twelve dancers framed at times by children carrying candles and wearing tinsel halos. Think angels on Christmas cards. While they youngsters performed throughout with bags of commitment, and energy and joy when called for, I’m not entirely sure they particularly added to this scene, though, or that they should gather at the front of the stage, where they did partially block the view of the main action.

Clara and the Nutcracker are welcomed to the Kingdom of Sweets by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier against a backdrop of assorted confectionery with Liquorice Allsorts and iced cones to the fore. The divertissements all brought something different, with Le Floc’h’s leaps and turns in the Russian Dance a clear audience favourite.

Lauren Hunter (Royal Ballet School, Dutch National Ballet) and Yasset Roldan (Ballet Revolucion of Cuba, now on the faculty at Kings) delivered a neatly danced Grand pas de deux, not stinting on any of the steps and looking very comfortable in each other’s company. While grand jetés are at a premium on the Macready Theatre’s relatively small stage, Roldan made his manège look easy.

Kings International Ballet’s Nutcracker really was a very satisfying couple of hours; and it was a real pleasure also to be so close to the action. There were times when those in the front row could probably have reached out and touched the dancers.

One should never forget the importance of taking professional classical ballet, indeed any dance, to places where it’s not normally seen. For many in the Macready Theatre audience it was likely their only encounter of the year with the art form. Listening to comments, for some it was their first ever. Well done Kings and the Macready!