If you must grow up, why not sugar the blow with fistfuls of sweets? English National Ballet’s unfeasibly pretty Nutcracker is both a festive treat and a fudgy fable about the sticky business of approaching adulthood. Clara begins as a little girl and ends as – well, still a youngster, but one who has seen visions of the brave and buoyant future that might await.
Although slammed at the 1892 premiere (“a more tedious work was never seen”), Tchaikovsky’s melt-in-the-mouth melodies have soundtracked the holiday season for generations of ballet goers. This 2024 production by ENB’s director Aaron S Watkin and Arielle Smith already feels nicely settled, ample as a bowl of trifle. In Edwardian London (chimney sweeps, suffragettes, light fingered urchins), Clara’s family throws a genteel Christmas party. Later, as she dreams, everyone re-emerges as fantasy figures: so Sangeun Lee and Gareth Haw’s dashing mum and dad become the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier.
