A new Nutcracker, the company’s eleventh iteration, to celebrate English National Ballet’s 75th birthday, and a new artistic director at the helm… Wayne Eagling’s version (designer Peter Farmer), created in 2010, with its hot air balloon and King Rat with skull head and eyes like headlights, has made a timely exit. A very different one by ENB’s AD, Aaron S Watkin, in collaboration with up-and-arrived young Arielle Smith, has taken its place.
He brings classical discipline; she brings a dance theatre vibe. I’m guessing she is the first act, he the second. Many of us did think it was time to pension off the Eagling, but, still, some nostalgia for it lingers. Of course, if you’ve never seen a Nutcracker ballet, it matters not a jot from the sounds in the audience and the sight of little girls trying out moves in the aisles in the interval.
Watkin and Smith maintain tradition with children more at the heart of it than ever before. Clara has agency in her own dream story: she kills the Rat King with a swordstick from a giant sausage cocktail. It is the Edwardian era of suffragettes (two in the thick of it) after all. On London’s bustling streets—with St Paul’s in the distance—stands Drosselmeyer’s Emporium of Sweets and Delights, which an excited Clara visits with her mother.
Across the street is Uromys Grimsewer’s (Junor Souza) cheese shop. The clue is in the name… uromys (look it up) is a giant rat—though visual clues (rats’ tails) suffice. There are chimney sweeps and pickpockets—a touch of Mary Poppins and Oliver. And children might think of the Snowman and the Snow Queen when Clara flies off on a sleigh drawn by an icicle seahorse to the Ice Realm. The Ice Queen (Precious Adams) has a name—Isolde—but you’d have to buy a programme to find that out.
A synopsis is handy if you want to know the ins and outs, but if not, just enjoy the colourful spectacle: this Nutcracker is full of vibrant colour. White clouds turn to pink candyfloss; the land of sweets and delights has a fairground bright energy after the icy blast of snowflakes and huge icicles.
The party automata are a Knight in Shining Armour and his Fair Maiden, both silver. In keeping (there’s a toy castle keep…) with that period I read the Land of Sweets and Delights set is partly based on The Field of the Cloth of Gold (Henry VIII and Francois I)—each sweet and delight has its own identity tent.
National sweet treats dances replace the national dances: a box of Spanish turrón, Middle Eastern sahlab with cinnamon sticks (Eric Snyder and Lorenzo Trossello) and frothy cream (Emily Suzuki) for the Arab, red berries on a stick Chinese tanghulu, German marzipan, and Ukrainian makivnyk (poppy seed roll) replaces the Russian dance. The Flowers become Buttercream Roses, headdresses of meringue (I think).
Led by Thiago Pereira in top hat (Mad Hatter or Willy Wonka?) and overseen by Grandmother (Laura Hussey) as Head of Box, there are also delightful tiny tot liquorice allsorts (on sale in the bar together with popcorn), who are soooo sweeeet.
Clara whirls and dances amongst them all, samples all the delights, but best of all are the glamorous Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, especially as danced tonight (I’m at the third night, fourth performance if I count today’s matinée) by lead principal Sangeun Lee and principal Gareth Haw, who in the first act are Clara’s elegant parents. A gala piece with its two variations apiece.
For the little wannabe ballet dancers in the audience, even better than best of all must be young Clara, convincingly performed by Delilah Wiggins, who grows to be Katja Khaniukova and gets to dance with the Nutcracker Prince (Miguel Angel Maidana).
As in many of our dreams, daytime events and people can crowd our nightly fantasies. The double-act chimney sweeps become the Chinese sweets, and so on. That shiny sugarplum with magic qualities, that Nutcracker on the shelf in the emporium Drosselmeyer (Ken Saruhashi) gifts her at the party… but there’s something distinctly ‘Hoffman’ creepy about him and his assistants in baldhead masks sprouting side tufts of hair.
There is much to take in, and much still needs to bed in, but the children from Adagio and West London Schools of Dance seem totally uninhibited. Street children, rats, gingerbread cookies (though blink and you miss them) and the children’s Trinity Voices Choir are all lovely, very Christmassy, together with the otherworldly celeste.
The magic of Christmas for a brief moment (two hours with interval) unites us all. And Clara knows her dream was real. How? She is still wearing the necklace the Sugar Plum Fairy gave her.
Reviewer: Vera Liber