Nutcracker, English National Ballet Review 4*
English National Ballet’s eye-catching and immensely entertaining new Nutcracker delighted a packed Coliseum on opening night
Fresh, lively and very sweet – English National Ballet’s new Nutcracker is definitely a vast and much needed improvement on the company’s previous production.
Co-choreographed by artistic director Aaron S Watkin and the much in-demand dance maker Arielle Smith, with crucial input from designer Dick Bird, lighting designer Paul Pyant and videos by Leo Flint, this Nutcracker fizzes with joy, magic and sheer visual delight, and achieves much of the coherence between Acts I and II, which its creators strived for.
And, first night nerves notwithstanding, at its Coliseum opening it was danced with tremendous commitment by the entire company, child guest artists very much included, jollied along by a crisp reading of Tchaikovsky’s score by the English National Ballet Philharmonic conducted by Maria Seletskaja.
This Nutcracker adheres to the traditional storyline, carried over since its 1892 St Petersburg premiere, but the production team add their own embellishments: in a prologue to the Christmas Eve party, young Clara and her mother cross a bustling Christmas street market peopled by dancing chimney sweeps, suffragettes and a band of child pickpockets run by the Fagin-like Uromys Grimsewer, to enter the Drosselmeyer Emporium of Sweets and Delights, where they buy sweets for the party.
The detail of the sets – wintry Edwardian London street hazily lit by yellow gas lamps, Emporium shelves packed with colourful jars of sweets – fills the eye. The smoothest of scene changes then moves the action to the party.
Arielle Smith has imbued the party scene with all manner of interesting vignettes; its bourgeois decorum incessantly broken by impish children, busy butlers and, of course, the hyperactive Drosselmeyer (a mischievous Junor Souza) and his magic turns. Clara, the enchanting Delilah Wiggins, goes to sleep clutching her beloved nutcracker doll.
In her dream she’s a little older and her nutcracker has morphed into a handsome prince. The pas de deux between Clara, danced now by Ivana Bueno, and her prince, Francesco Gabriele Frola, is a marvel of innocence, wide-eyed discovery, the dancers convincingly portraying the blossoming of first love while sailing through tricky and demanding choreography.
Act II, set in the Land of Sweets and Delights, is all sugar spun sweetness an exotic colouring. Here, establishing a bridge between the two acts, the characters of Act I manifest as something else: many are sweets from faraway lands and Clara’s mother has morphed into the Sugar Plum Fairy.
The Arabian divertissement, for example, is now a flowing dance representing the middle eastern drink sachlav; the Spanish dance is the traditional turrón, while the Ukrainian Makivnyk (note the absence of the traditional Russian dance) gives Erik Woolhouse an opportunity to shine in a virtuoso turn (though I’d suggest dropping the silly moustache).
Most daring, perhaps, was Aaron S Watkin’s iconoclastic decision to re-choreograph the emblematic Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux.
Danced on first night by a graceful and self-assured Emma Hawes with Aitor Arrieta as her Cavalier, the choreography combined parts of the original with what was clearly a sequence of Watkin’s favourites.
I guess in time we’ll stop missing the concision of Petipa/Ivanov’s original. Because, make no mistake, this engaging, sweet, effervescent Nutcracker shows ENB at its best, and it will last.
© Teresa Guerreiro
Banner image credit: English National Ballet, Aaron S Watkin and Arielle Smith’s Nutcracker, the company. Photography by ASH
English National Ballet’s Nutcracker is a the London Coliseum until 12th January 2025. Full info and tickets here