A 24-carat Christmas treat
The Royal Ballet’s version of reminds just how marvellous this well-worn tale can be
In this job, when you’re about to catch your first Nutcracker of the season, you can sometimes experience a faint zephyr of déjà vu – can this 1892 ballet, you wonder, really hold any fresh surprises? Then the curtain lifts on a production as lovely as the Royal Ballet’s, and you instantly feel a full-on gust of shame at having felt even remotely blasé.
Created by Peter Wright way back in 1984 – and not to be confused with his later, 1990 version for the Royal Ballet’s Midlands sister company – this repeatedly revised production delivers on every level. True, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s staging has the edge on spectacle – but the moment the Royal’s begins, you nevertheless realise that you’re in very safe hands indeed.
For one thing, Wright (sitting in the stalls on opening night, still looking snazzy at 92) has taken pains to link Acts I and II with a proper narrative: the magician Drosselmeyer now has a backstory that makes perfect sense of why his Nutcracker doll is so precious to him, why he gives it to young Clara Stahlbaum, and why it’s vital that he follow her to the Kingdom of Sweets. (See what I mean? You’re intrigued already!)
For another, in Act II, we are spared the familiar, dispiriting sight of Clara and the Nutcracker (aka Hans-Peter) sitting as inertly as the audience as they watch the various divertissements play out. Instead, he gets them involved in every one, which is so much more fun. Add the cosy grandeur of Julia Trevelyan Oman’s Biedermeier-era designs, Herr Drosselmeyer’s youngsterenrapturing panoply of magic tricks, a stupendous transformation scene, and the gemütlich night-beforeChristmas household bustle that Wright whips up on stage, and you have a show with remarkable cross-generational appeal.
Then, there’s Wright’s Ivanovinfluenced choreography – which does the job very nicely indeed – and of course, the dancing, which last week yielded plenty of delights. In that enduring peculiarity of this ballet, the pair of characters you see most of (Clara and Hans-Peter) are often performed by soloists and first soloists, whereas it’s the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince who, despite not coming on until almost three-quarters of the way in, are almost invariably danced by principals. The trick is to make each couple strong in itself but also different from the other, and on first night this contrast came off very well.
If there are moments when AnnaRose O’Sullivan’s Clara is rather eclipsed by Marcelino Sambé’s stage-devouring grands jetés as her beau, together they paint a winsome portrait of first love, her girlish flightiness and his boyish braggadoccio set ideally against the stateliness of the star couple. As the latter, Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov are regality incarnate, completely in charge of stage and steps, both dancing as if the usual terrestrial laws of time and gravity simply do not apply to them: the grown-ups that Clara and Hans-Peter might one day hope to become.
Elsewhere, plaudits to Melissa Hamilton’s seductive Arabian, two muscular Russians (Paul Kay and Kevin Emerton), and a buoyant Chinese duo (Luca Acri and Leo Dixon). Praise too for the boys’ and girls’ corps, to the young Royal Ballet School students in Act I, and also to the house orchestra under Barry Wordsworth, making fine work of Tchaikovsky’s sparkling score.
The fattest Christmas stocking of all, though, should probably go to Gary Avis. As Drosselmeyer, he hustles the story forward with elegance, authority and flamboyance, conjures with the brio of the late Paul Daniels, and makes the narrative thread really rather stirring.
All in all, just right – or, you might say, just Wright. Added to which, this same, first-rate cast returns on Dec 22, with plenty of other tantalising line-ups during the show’s six-week run. Trust me, Christmas presents seldom come finer. Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice’s rock ’n’ roll musical. The Palladium has seen a number of high-profile revivals down the years, making this production a kind of homecoming. family-friendly festive offering (in addition to The Nutcracker), the Royal Ballet is serving up this mixed bill of Ashton’s charming ice-skating fantasia Les Patineurs, MacMillan’s romantic Winter Dreams and Jerome Robbins’s exquisite comic masterpiece,